#HOW WAS THAT NOT AN INTENTIONAL CHARACTERIZATION CHOICE. THIS IS A SMART SHOW. COME /ON/

[musical-chick-13]

Bro, I'm so tired.

[possibilistfanfiction]

i love how ava’s being very anti instution is clear in your stuff, i feel like some fics forget that about her or in trying to show that beatrice knows her stuff accidentally make it come across as if ava isn’t politically aware & needs to be lectured on politics by Beatrice

when canonically ava’s literally a abuse survivor who was abused because of her disability and had religion used as justifiation for her abuse and so is kinda more than a little against institutions and systems

anyway as a disabled person it’s more than a bit exhausting to read “abled person lectures disabled person on politics” regardless of authorial intent, so just wanted to say thanks for staying away from that, reading your ava characterization is really a breath of fresh air

absolutely! ava is so so so smart!! most gaps she has, at least for me canonically, are because she just didn't have access to any sound schooling (obviously — especially with history, but also just basic civics? exposure to different politic? etc). so it's like, of course ava wouldn't know that the nazis persecuted & killed queer people if she learned subpar history (undoubtedly with the shittiest pedagogy on the planet) from nuns who hated her — but once she learns it, she's immediately like oh. that contextually makes sense in a horrible way. fuck them. like it's not an issue of politic but just of nuanced & additional information — in the real world i'm sure ava's politic would (of course) grow (as hopefully all of ours irl continue to do lol), but it wouldn't be a real shift in politic, especially bc of an able-bodied person lecturing her or something. it would just be one that contains more concrete events, history, current povs, etc, because she would just learn more & have access to stuff!

i also think like you said that when bea lectures in the show, that's mostly about ava just being goofy when she needs to be serious, or definitely just not understanding the insane situation she's found herself in — which contextually is fair, but i don't think would happen with politic or ethic sort of beyond the halo/battles, etc. even her like 'you should think about someone other than yourself' is mostly motivated by ava's mission/the ocs's mission; ava is selfish but she has every right to be. & of course that's ava's main character arc growth: realizing that, while she always wants to be selfish (kissing bea), she has been put into a role that is far greater than her. that's a politic in itself, really

in reality bea probably has more to learn about politic & anti-state ethic than ava lol. i get why this isn't A Thing in the show but if i choose to throw them into NOT the catholic church lol, it's a reality that bea is a queer woman of color, specifically an asian woman, which does matter — in ways that can hurt but also in finding community & history that informs/builds a particular politic. i feel like it's incomplete to not at least include that a LITTLE. but yah bea like... rly fucks w The Institution at least for some of the show. she's got a lot to unlearn!

& yes i TOTALLY agree that ava's abuse & disability (even if people choose to write her as no longer disabled which.... a choice but ok lol) would absolutely eventually really inform her politic. i simply haven't gotten to this yet but ava finding disability justice (& by that i obviously mean like intersectional disability justice led by & designed for queer & trans folks, especially qtpoc) would be so fucking cool for her! communal care? anti-state abolition? abolition of Institutions (psychiatric, medical, etc) that harm that are rooted in white supremacy (& specifically the church)... she would LOVE it. she would be so into it. it would be such a respite & passion & joy for her as she got older & realized she has such purpose through her experiences, without the halo & without any holy wars. also they would both be thoughtful about thinking transnationally which rocks.

anyway yah i feel like out of the two of them ava is actually the most likely to like a) access information in "non-academic" ways; b) have a more radical politic just inherently. not that i think bea is like a shitty neoliberal person forever or anything bc... she would also be v smart, but ava is awesome.

[caffeinatedseri]

The Strength of Selfishness

Each character in BSD has a degree of selfishness or selflessness in themselves, but the way this concept is executed opens discussion on the nuance of “selfishness,” or specifically the flaws in believing selfishness is an inherently bad trait.

Atsushi

Atsushi fits the description of selflessness, but I’d argue that he’s actually more selfish than he thinks he is (keeping in mind that being selfish isn’t necessarily a bad thing).

Akutagawa points out how Atsushi will needlessly risk his life in order to protect others, which sounds like a pretty heroic act, but it comes with a cost. Atsushi isn’t invincible, especially at this point in the story when he hasn’t fully mastered his ability, but his insistence on protecting others puts him in constant danger.

At the end of the day, Atsushi would have a greater chance of surviving many of the dangerous situations he puts himself into if he was more selfish by protecting himself before others.

However, Atsushi is also somewhat selfish in his motivations for acting so virtuously. 

Once again, Akutagawa points out how Atsushi only acts this way because of his deeply rooted belief that he has to risk his life for someone else in order to give his life value. You could argue that Atsushi only saves others as an attempt to prove to himself that he’s worthy, an inherently selfish motive. If Atsushi actually died, he would be endangering the people he could save in the future.

Selfishness also includes self-centeredness. Particularly with Akutagawa, Atsushi’s tendency to focus solely on himself becomes especially noticeable. Atsushi constantly doubts himself and his strengths; he also ignores his privileges and the struggles of others, particularly when he can’t completely understand them — hence why he views Akutagawa so harshly but sees Kyouka and Lucy as people who need to be saved. 

Despite all of this, Atsushi still creates a positive impact in other people’s lives. His innately selfish motivation is what drives him to protect others, and he ultimately succeeds in doing that (case in point Kyouka and Lucy again). 

Akutagawa

Akutagawa is pretty similar to Atsushi in how his past led to his inevitably selfish motives, but his manifests in a different way. 

Akutagawa has to be selfish to protect himself, due to a mix of his past prior to joining the mafia and Dazai’s teachings that collectively reinforced the belief that if he’s weak, he can’t survive.

This results in Akutagawa taking other people’s lives, a direct contrast to how Atsushi saves others, in order to prove his worth as a strong individual that deserves to live. However, this sentiment narrowly crosses the line of hypocrisy when Akutagawa does the very same thing that he criticized Atsushi for: looking for value in his life through other people.

Akutagawa also unnecessarily risks his life in order to prove his strength, which is arguably more dangerous and selfish than what Atsushi does. 

When Akutagawa fights Hawthorne, he practically eggs on Hawthorne to kill him, or at the very least fight with the intent to kill. Akutagawa was also injured before entering this fight, so running away would’ve been all the more reasonable than continuing to fight.

Drawing another parallel to Atsushi, Akutagawa has that very same resolve of risking his life unnecessarily to prove his worth. 

It’s undeniable that Akutagawa has killed many people — which is arguably extremely selfish — and loss of life really isn’t something that I want to push as morally correct. However, I would like to push the idea of redemption: finding a way to escape this messy lifestyle. I sincerely doubt that the incessant cycle of killing is any good for Akutagawa, or that it’s the life that he wants to have. 

With Atsushi and Akutagawa, both of their character arcs will develop accordingly to this balance of selfishness and selflessness.

Ranpo

Ranpo is characterized in a slightly selfish way, but this mindset comes with good reason (relating to Ranpo’s past). 

When Atsushi was kidnapped, Ranpo places priority on protecting the agency. If he were to meddle with Atsushi’s problem, which was technically a personal issue, then the agency as an organization would be put at risk. This isn’t necessarily a “wrong” mindset, but it is self-centered.

Of course, this is one of many examples to showcase Ranpo’s arrogance, but his arrogance is actually a form of self-protection. 

“So his father knew, after all. He understood that Ranpo possessed an extraordinary gift. He knew his son had the special ability to observe, remember, and uncover the truth in the blink of an eye. That was why he sealed it away. He didn’t want Ranpo to go astray, to ever hurt others and make the world his enemy.  His father wanted Ranpo to learn virtue and what’s right just like any ordinary person until he had grown up with good judgment and knowledge.” —  LN 3, “The Untold Origins of the Detective Agency”

Before Ranpo met Fukuzawa, he was just a young, lost boy who didn’t recognize his extraordinary talents. His parents taught him to be modest to allow him to develop as a normal person, but he never truly understood who he was in comparison to other people because he was orphaned at a young age.

Thus, Ranpo had to embrace his superiority, in an albeit dramatic way, in order to accept the world and himself. If he believed that people weren’t as intelligent as him, then he wouldn’t have to hate himself for feeling like an outsider to a world he doesn’t understand. 

Similarly to Akutagawa, Ranpo’s selfishness isn’t born out of hatred or negligence for others, it’s simply a survivalist instinct. 

Dazai

Dazai’s case is a little trickier to define, but I feel that he’s changed a decent amount throughout the series. I’ve seen some people argue that Dazai only helps others because of Oda’s dying wish, which would make his motivations for doing so inherently selfish. This rings true for Dazai before becoming a part of the agency, but I’d say he’s changed a lot just from interacting with the other agency members.

Dazai’s shown to be capable of the selflessness that involves risking your life for others, but because he’s Dazai, he’s most likely never going to actually die (he has taken necessary precautions to make sure he doesn’t die like in Dead Apple). In this case, Dazai was willing to risk his life for intel from Fyodor, similar to how he got captured by the PM intentionally for intel on Atsushi.

What he says here is especially important: “Certainly, people are sinfully stupid. But what’s so wrong about that?” The Dazai that was once isolated from others, that lacked a sense of direction and purpose in life, has grown one step closer to finding that purpose.

It’s no secret that character to character relationships have a big impact on everyone in BSD, but it’s especially relevant for Dazai who’s growth comes from learning about human nature. He and Fyodor both share a level of super intelligence that ostracizes them from the rest of society, which consequently makes them incapable of understanding other people.

Dazai’s statement here just shows how he’s willing to look past people’s mistakes — yes, they may be sinful and/or stupid, but that’s just a part of human nature.

And in this case, he acts in a stupid way by risking his life for someone else. Yes, it may be stupid, but this selflessness is also a part of being human.

I’d also like to add that Dazai was somewhat selfish in leaving the PM so suddenly after Oda’s death. As an executive, he undoubtedly had some responsibilities to handle, and not to mention Chuuya who was dragged into the mafia because of him in the first place. However, leaving the mafia was ultimately better for his development, and you could argue that the PM is doing just fine with Mori remaining as the leader. Thus, Dazai is another example of how selfishness isn’t harmful in nature.

Mori

On the topic of Mori, he’s a character who outright acknowledges his selflessness as a necessity for the mafia’s advancement.

As I mentioned before, selflessness is a stereotypically heroic trait, but it’s flipped around in BSD. You see protagonists with greater selfish convictions than the antagonists, who live their life based on this idea of selflessness. 

Of course, just because Mori is an antagonist, this doesn’t mean that selflessness is an innately “evil” trait. In fact, this selflessness is how he grows his organization and gains respect from his subordinates. Mori’s selflessness is used for the benefit of everyone else in the PM (ignoring the obvious crimes that the mafia commits of course).

Oda

Oda is often seen as the role model example for a “good man,” in the world of BSD — which is true to a certain extent. We certainly know how he was selfless in a multitude of scenarios, from saving the orphans at the Dragon’s Head Conflict, to his resolve to not kill anyone, and his push for Dazai to leave the mafia. 

However, I’d like to discuss Oda’s selfishness. Oda was well-aware of Dazai’s issues during Dark Era, and he seemed like the only person who would understand Dazai at that level. Despite this, he still chose to die. 

“(Dazai) is just a child who’s too smart. Just a crying child who’s been left alone in the darkness, a world of nothingness far emptier than the world we can see.”

— LN 2, “Osamu Dazai and the Dark Era”

Oda is an idealist first and foremost; when reality fails to match his ideals, it becomes unbearable for him to continue living on. 

Oda was selfish in his conviction to die, because he knew he could’ve done more for Dazai, but he chose to leave him with a dying wish rather than staying with him to potentially fill that void of loneliness.

(I’d like to mention that Oda wasn’t wrong for his choice, because Dazai ended up on the right path in the end. It was simply an act of selfishness that ended for the better).

Kunikida

Kunikida is an idealist, much like Oda, but he also draws close to being a realist at certain moments.

Kunikida shares the same selfless resolve as Atsushi: to save everyone. His ideals seem unbreakable to the point where he would risk his life and succeed in the end no matter what, purely because he’s just that committed towards his goals.

This treads closely to Atsushi’s selfishness. In this case, for Kunikida, it’s somewhat a part of his self-fulfilling prophecy to make his ideals come true, but he acts selflessly because of these ideals that he believes in. 

An important thing to note here is Fyodor’s grin, because Fyodor — as an idealist — is well aware of the fact that the greater the ideals, the loftier these ideals become in reality. 

“By that very logic, then Miss Sasaki was not responsible for any of these recent events! She didn’t even want a world in which all criminals are rightly judged! She only— Tell me, Dazai! Was it right for her to die? Is this the ideal world I’ve sought for…”

— LN 1, “Osamu Dazai’s Entrance Exam”

At the end of the Azure Messenger Arc, Kunikida realizes the flaws in his ideals when he fails to uphold them. By trying to save both Rokuzou and Sasaki, he ended up losing the both of them. No matter how hard he tried to save them, there was no possible way for him to achieve the level of “justice” that he desired.

This teaches an incredibly valuable lesson to Kunikida that shifts his mindset towards a more selfish direction.

Kunikida’s experience leads him to teach Atsushi, another person strongly motivated by ideals, to not follow the same path as him. You could interpret this as a sign of Kunikida’s declining resolve, but I prefer to view it as another form of self-preservation.

Kunikida very well understands the pain that comes from not meeting his ideals, which could easily affect to Atsushi considering how difficult it would be to save Kyouka.

The scene in which Kunikida goes to save Atsushi parallels what Kunikida told him previously: “Your boat can only carry one person. If you let someone beyond salvation come aboard, you will only drown together.”

Notice how Kunikida is in a boat with plenty of space, but out of fear that his ideals won’t be upheld, he’ll lower them to an lesser standard. Instead of trying to save two people, he settles for one, despite the fact that he has the capacity for two. 

This instance is a moment of selfishness from Kunikida, an act of self-preservation to prevent the inevitable pain that comes with unmet ideals. 

However, Atsushi subverts his expectations by pushing himself to save Kyouka regardless of his sinking boat, because Atsushi’s own ideals motivate him to do so. Kunikida teaches Atsushi to be careful with the balance of selfishness and selflessness; Atsushi teaches Kunikida the beauty in being selfless.

[problemswithbooks]

I took it as hawks being conflicted over twice because he had befriended him. He wasn’t dawdling but trying to change twice’s mind or protect him until twice gave him no choice.

I do think that was supposed to be how it was interpreted, but for me that still doesn’t work for a multitude of reasons.

First of all we weren’t shown many interactions between Twice and Hawks. They presumably spent quite a bit of time together, but Hawks’ time with the PLF was skipped over--mostly showing it in small panel flashbacks. To the readers it felt like he’d been there no time at all. 

It feels really weird that Hawks, who is very guarded, even to those he trusts decently well, like Endeavor would suddenly be so sentimental and torn up over a man he barely knows. Twice is nice, yes, but Hawks is well aware of the danger he poses and was always interacting with him knowing he should stay distant from him. 

With the few scenes they had together it doesn't feel like Hawks’ deep care for Jin is earned. Or at least foster the kind of care that would make him lose all logic and override the training he’s had since he was a child. 

This is only compounded by the fact that if he did care about Jin so deeply it makes no sense that he would show up like this--

If Hawks is all conflicted about arresting and betraying Twice, who he sees as a good person and possible friend, why treat him this poorly? Why mock Twice for believing in the ruse? Why be so needlessly mean?

But it doesn't make any more sense if you remove Hawks’ affection for Twice either. 

Hawks was always presented as a highly intelegent man that had been trained special by the HPSC to read people. He inflitrated the PLF and relayed their plans to the Heroes without getting caught or even raising suspition, even though he was the #2 Hero in the country. 

As smart as he’s presented, Hawks should know that mocking someone and cornering them in a room wouldn’t make them very cowapertive. 

If he was trying to get Twice’s to listen to him, whether he liked him or not, Hawks should have opened with this sort of understanding and kindness. Maybe explained that he didn’t want to spy on the PLF, but because they plan to destroy Japan, leading to possibly millions of people dying he had to. Maybe ask Twice if thousands of lives are worth less then his sense of belonging. 

Or you know, if Hawks really cared about Jin, or keeping his power from being used during the raid, use Jin’s trusting nature to lure him away, subduing him as fast as possible and then trying to have the heart to heart with him.

And this isn’t me blaming Hawks--he’s not real. I’m not even blaming the writing, at least not entirely. The forced ‘is Hawks a bad guy?’ stuff that Hori shoehorned into it when he had no intentions of following through on it is terrible and has left people with an impression of Hawks’ character that I doubt Hori intended. 

But in a lot of ways I can see that Hori wrote himself into a corner. Twice needed to die. As soon as he became a one man army Hori needed a way to explain why Twice wasn’t single handedly winning the war for the LoV. Killing him was the easiest option. 

Yet, Hori doesn’t want Twice to look like a terrible person either. He wants his death to be sad. But, at the same time that means whomever kills him is going to come off as a bad guy. 

Which is why I think the fight has such a back and forth framing issue. Hori doesn’t want either Hawks of Twice to be the bad guy, and even though Dabi is framed as mostly negative in that fight, not even he comes off as 100% wrong. They’re all just paper cut outs trying to enact a scene that needs to happen for the story to progress, characterization be damned. 

[ouyangzizhensdad]

Please please do write the post about wwx not being dumb/oblivious. Those posts were just funny at first but somehow it's now become accepted fact. Meanwhile whether cql or mdzs wwx is a very competent, savvy protagonist who's actually pretty observant! It's getting pretty tiring to see him reduced to genki oblivous magical girl (not that I don't like those, it's just wwx is not one).

Hey anon! 

I do plan on writing a more elaborate meta post exploring what arguments there are in the novel to support my wwx is not dumb/oblivious agenda.

But for now I just want to address one factor I think plays a big part in shaping the fandom’s perception of wwx as oblivious/dumb, regardless of how wwx was actually written in the novel. That is, the creative liberties taken by (or forced onto) the cql production team, which have had in my opinion two consequences: 1) cql does not manage to establish how quick-witted and savvy wwx is, which is compounded by the fact that it chose to play the troublemaker persona straight  2) the fact that wwx and lwj’s relationship is entirely subtext actually ends up making wwx look oblivious (at least to people applying a queer reading/bl-danmei reading to their interactions--people who are obvious to or choose to ignore the subtext certainly wouldn’t come to the same conclusions). 

So, the first issue. In the novel, wwx’s intelligence is more of a focal point in the narrative because it is a crucial part of the dramatic irony/tragedy of his death: as a result it cannot help being more important to the themes of the novel. After all, he is ultimately hunted down because of and killed by his inventions. The man created an entirely new field of cultivation! In cql, this is somewhat lost due to the fact that he does not invent modao nor does he create the yin hufu, and his death is more of a suicide than a sacrifice (i am still not over the fact that he throws the yin hufu at the crowd to let them wage war over it? that’s the complete thematic opposite of his death in the novel...). 

The novel, as well, is better at establishing that wwx’s antics are generally not because he’s just being a troublemaker, but that they are a way in which he garners information, gets people to act the way he needs them to or misdirect them. For instance, in cql, when lwj destroys wwx’s (well, nhs’s) spring book in the library, wwx looks genuinely pained and affronted--in the novel, it is clearly shown that, when wwx realized lwj intended to bring the spring book to lqr, he intentionally made him angry so that he would destroy the evidence himself. the point of the prank was also to not only get a reaction out of lwj, but also (reading btw the lines) wwx’s way of trying to leave a lasting impression on lwj now that his punishment was over. Differently put, while wwx can do directionless pranks,  more often than not, they have an underlying meaning/goal instead of just being for Attention(TM) in general. In contrast, the web series is full of missed opportunities in terms of characterisation, and is so from the very beginning (I find extremely disappointing how they decided to adapt the mo mansion and dafan mountain arcs because of how important they are to establishing wwx’s character for the readers/viewers. Through these arcs, we get acquainted with the way he thinks and deduces information, and how he uses people’s perceptions of him and others to his advantage. If you can only read English, @pumpkinpaix‘s translation of the first few chapters might help get a better sense of the nuances). 

I’m not saying that wwx is portrayed as dumb in cql: but that his characterization is a lot more fuzzy and inconsistent, and that his intelligence is utilized mostly when wwx goes into his detective mode. As a result, I do feel like it undermines how analytical wwx is in all aspects of his life, making it easy to see him as, you know, someone who’s, like, half-smart, half-super-dumb. 

As for issue #2, part of it boils down to the fact that most of the obstacles to wangxian’s relationship had to be erased due to censorship. There no longer is homophobia/internalized homophobia to motivate moments of denial or internal conflict; there is no longer the phoenix mountain kiss to explain lwj’s reluctance to respond to wwx’s flirting after his rebirth (as I explored in one of my other meta post); there is no longer lwj’s failed confession and lwj’s mistaken belief that wwx knows of his feelings, etc. These vectors of tension help contextualise and explain why it takes so long for wwx to realize lwj’s feelings towards him (but let’s not forget that he does: after jinlintai, he starts to realize that lwj treats him especially well, which becomes a certainty after the second siege). the cql production team had no choice but to take these elements away. 

that being said, by adding new or by changing moments to support the subtext and to please (bl-danmei) fans, the show actually takes away even more vectors of tension/misunderstanding between wwx and lwj, and makes wwx’s crush seem even more obvious and straight-forward. Take for instance the mo mansion arc. In the novel, wwx sees the Lan disciples’ white robes and has this moment of reflection that he recognizes the robes, and sees danger in the fact that the Lan sect is involved, thinking he should leave but knowing he can’t until he resolves the curse. in cql, we get a slow-pan flash-back of wwx’s first encounter with lwj, leaving him clearly emotional. The novel sets up the association as: white robes -> Lan Sect (subtext, Lan Zhan) -> orthodox/sticklers to rules/people i’ve met in my previous life who disapproved of modao -> danger! In cql, we have instead: whites robes -> Lan Zhan -> emotional reaction/I miss him. That fact is further driven home when wwx starts playing wuji on a blade of grass, ending with a soulfully whispered “lan zhan”. In terms of subtext, it sure lays it on thick: wwx does look like he has a big crush on lwj! But that destroys a big source of tension between them at the beginning: when wwx is summoned into mxy’s body, he thinks lwj hates him and disapproves of his methods and wants to bring him to gusu to punish him. That’s why he wants to run away at first, why he doesn’t disclose his identity to him and why it takes him a moment to understand lwj’s intentions. cql does not do a great job of setting that up. And the changes they make to the events of wwx’s first life, including changes to the timeline through which we are introduced to what happened in the past, makes it even more difficult to see how wwx could have misunderstood lwj’s intentions or his own feelings (again, in a queer or danmei-bl reading of the subtext). They go on a mission together! Spend a lot of time working together toward a similar goal!Lwj calls him his zhiji (”soulmate” as is often translated)! Lwj literally tries to save him from dying! The last thing wwx would remember when he wakes up in mxy’s body would be lwj holding onto his hand and screaming his name when he let go! Again, it does great for the subtext--but it makes it really difficult to understand why wwx would misunderstand lwj’s intentions and feelings, and it makes his own feelings toward lwj seem quite obvious. 

Overall, the changes in the themes, genre, events, narrative timeline, characterisation and much more in adapting mdzs into cql have been an important influence explaining why the fandom has this vision of wwx as dumb/oblivious. It reminds me of the way some people on tumblr like to talk about Mr. Darcy as “shy” and “awkward” based on the movie pride and prejudice 2005, which totally misses the point of Mr Darcy and his character as portrayed by Jane Austen--but, if people have only or mainly engaged with this specific adaptation, it is not necessarily surprising that they hold this frankly misguided interpretation due to the choices made by the film production team. 

In contrast, in the novel, we are shown a lot to help us understand why wwx comes to the wrong conclusions or might not understand his own feelings and reactions. But that’s for all for another post!

[notsogreatgamer]

SPOILERS FOR INFINITE DARKNESS BELOW

As promised, this is the Claire and Leon post. I will include my thoughts underneath a keep reading line. 

Firstly, I am going to talk about Leon. His characterization here seems all over the place. While he may be irritated about the Raccoon City coverup and wants to end bioterror, he doesn’t really seem it aside from the anger he expresses to Jason. Additionally, they really tried to lean in to the Lady’s Man persona by having him ask Shen May out to dinner the second they are left alone and then have it happen again with Claire (He assumes that she is calling him out for dinner) and it just felt jarring. (Or as I thought at the time, it made him seem lonely--constantly seeking companionship.) My husband who was watching it with me said many times that he just didn’t understand Leon. Wouldn’t he want the same things Shen May and Jason do--to expose the coverup--given his history? And I tried to defend Leon because it’s complicated and, to me, his reluctance to expose the US government boils down to Claire and Sherry’s safety--specifically Sherry. The girl is a powerful bargaining chip for Leon. However, this isn’t anything shown to us and is just...speculation.

Now for Claire. I hate how little screen time she got and how careless they made her. The appearance of her motel wall tells us that she has been researching this for a long time--likely since finding that sketch by the young boy. She is smart enough to make the necessary connections without Jason or Shen May giving her that information. (So, despite the end of the series, I believe she will go public with the information and it will be convincing enough to at least cause questions to be asked of the US government.) Despite this showcasing of capability, they made her so careless with that information otherwise. Loudly announcing that she found an incriminating note at the scene of a MAD DOG’s suicide to the man that was likely implicated in it?! This woman has survived TWO zombie infestations and yet she chooses a lamp as her weapon of choice when someone breaks into her motel room? She screams before hitting--announcing her attack and giving him time to turn around?? Leaving the door open instead of shutting it and locking it in case another agent is just behind him?? Like, come on, Claire. You are better than this. Her personality was pretty spot on to what I was expecting though: snarky, sarcastic, and straightforward. They didn’t exactly make her a damsel in distress either, so that was a positive. She did get kidnapped, but she got out of the situation mostly on her own; she just needed a hand up which Leon provided. 

Let’s talk that scene. It was the typical ship-tease that I expected to find. She falls on top of him and they have a Cloud/Tifa moment and the way they were looking at one another was *chef’s kiss*. He looks at her so softly and she takes a minute to look at him; they are also so slow to get up. 

Now, the ending scene that everyone has been saying is the end of Cleon. I have already expressed in a re-blogged post that I don’t believe that is the intention. They are arguing about a difference in methods, yes, but that doesn’t mean anything has ended between them. That isn’t how relationships work; one argument doesn’t end everything. They are still friends; they still share that bond; they still care for another. Their argument can boil down to Leon wanting to protect her and Claire wanting to push forward despite the backlash. 

My initial reaction to Leon’s answer to Claire’s request that he stop babying her was a disappointed “awe” because it felt like this was Capcom’s way of saying they were platonic only but then the scene from before directly contradicts that. So, I believe that maybe they were attempting to show that Leon cares and wants to protect her and he puts that before her immediate happiness--as shown by him denying her the chip. She may be angry at him, but at least she’s safe from any fallout. However, I did feel it was a little out of character. Because he doesn't treat her like a child. He has always treated her like his partner. Raccoon City proved they could lean on one another; even if she is younger than him, she proved herself capable and he respects the shit out of her. Harvardville, he had no hesitation in building her up and defending why she should have a say in their plans; he established she is his equal outloud and backed it up by throwing her his gun without hesitation. He does not treat her like a child; he treats her like his occasionally very rash partner.

As for Claire’s reaction, her anger is understandable. This is after Raccoon City, after Harvardville, after his promise to her that he will bring an end to bioterror. She knows what she will be getting into by making the information on Jun See’s chip public; she is ready for those risks, but Leon isn’t so he is denying her the chip. Partly because the narrative of Resident Evil demands he not be. I fully believe that he does want the coverup exposed; he wants to end bioterror and show the people cultivating it that they can’t get away with it, but he has connections that complicate outright exposing the coverup immediately after the President’s speech. If he sides with her, there is Sherry to consider. So, in my opinion, he’s playing the long game or at the very least waiting until the time is right to expose the information---NOT after a public speech by the president (and his father figure) that promotes peace. Even if Leon had wanted to explain, I don’t imagine Claire is in the mood to listen. Maybe once she cools down, she will be because I highly doubt the way they ended their conversation was satisfying for her.    

 So, I don’t expect that this is the end. 

Now I don’t know that I expect a season 2 simply because Resident Evil doesn’t have a history of providing sequels to their CGI movies. 

[blackjack-15]

Ziplines, Blood Ties, and Colonavirus — Thoughts on: The Silent Spy (SPY)

Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2, STFD, MHM, TRT, FIN, SSH, DOG, CAR, DDI, SHA, CUR, CLK, TRN, DAN, CRE, ICE, CRY, VEN, HAU, RAN, WAC, TOT, SAW, CAP, ASH, TMB, DED, GTH

Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be.

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it.

If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraph above, along with my list of previous metas.

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: SPY; mentions of the “Nancy Games” (ASH-SPY); SAW; mention of National Treasure (2004).

The Intro:

It’s our penultimate meta, and this time, it’s personal.

In every way, The Silent Spy is the culmination of the Nancy Games. Ever since her trip back home in ASH, Nancy has been increasingly featured in the games, showing us more of her personality, her life, and her backstory — all in an effort to lead up to this story, where we actually delve into Nancy’s place in the world and what it means that she lives in it.

And the answer to that is a lot less wholly idealistic than the franchise would have given 20+ games ago.

I don’t mean to say that SPY is a cynical game — it’s honestly fairly neutral, edging on positive — but that SPY accepts the fundamental truth that all of the Nancy games have been leading up to: that Nancy, though talented, hardworking, and connected, is simply another fish when it comes to the sea of life. She’s not unique in any way that really matters – look at her foils in Alexei, in Jamila, in Deirdre, in Jessalyn — and yet she continues to work hard, to solve puzzles, and to right old wrongs.

At least for me, this is a hopeful message. The point of “Nancy Drew, Girl Detective” is not that no one could do what she does, it’s not that she’s the best, most experienced sleuth in the world, and it’s not that she’s the Last, Best Hope of those who call upon her for aid. The point behind her character is that she’s a relatively normal (if wealthy) girl who does what she can, and chooses to do it again and again.

There’s a wonderful part in the equally wonderful movie National Treasure when our heroes are reading a part of the Declaration — the part talking about the right of the citizens to throw off a despotic government like the British had become — and Ben (Nicholas Cage, actually in a good movie for once!) defines it in modern speech:

“If there’s something wrong, those who have the ability to take action have the responsibility to take action.”

In the beginning of the Nancy Drew games series, Nancy is merely an intuitive puzzle solver. She gets her cases through family connections, turns up at places where mysteries happen to occur, etc. etc. As time goes on and she practices, she eventually comes to the point where she’s being hired for bigger and bigger cases, more and more regularly — in short, she starts to live the truth of that quote. Nancy is, at her core, someone with the ability to take action against things that are Wrong. Throughout this series — and most especially, throughout the “Nancy” games (ASH-SPY), she becomes someone who recognizes her responsibility to take action.

And that’s what’s showcased here in SPY. Upon arriving and learning that she’s been led to Glasgow under false circumstances, Nancy is immediately and wholly over her head — but she’s still someone who has the ability to take action to right a wrong. When she’s working against Revenant, warning the scientist, or reading through secret memo after secret memo, she’s not doing it with the intent to Save the World; she’s finishing Kate Drew’s last task. Her loyalty isn’t to Glasgow, to Cathedral, to MI5, or any other player in this story — her loyalty is to her mother, and to the task Kate Drew died while trying to finish.

Which is, in my view, the best possible motivation in a game that’s all about family.

With that discussion behind us, I want to talk a little bit here about the other theme of this game — power. Revenant, as the terrorist group that they are, want to seize power; their goal is to run Glasgow (branching off from there into a wider sphere, of course) through seizing power during a (self-induced) state of emergency — aka, what’s referred to in-game as the Colony operation.

This is, of course, Politics 101 — whip people up into a frenzy, come in promising to Save Everyone, and entrench yourself in power that you can’t be moved from with any amount of ease. And while Revenant planned it for 2005, it would work even better in 2013, when social media and instant, 24-hour news cycles can keep the fear alive far more effectively than Revenant would have hoped for nearly a decade prior.

Both in 2005 and 2013, Revenant nearly succeeds, only to be foiled by a red-head out of her depth but who tries anyway (the difference between the two, of course, is that Kate was isolated and Nancy had backup). The most startling thing — and one of my favorite things about this game – is that it doesn’t end with Nancy ‘killing’ Revenant once and for all, or even stopping the Colony Operation once and for all. Nancy is, in every way, out of her depth here; she’s not used by either side as an agent, or even as an asset — she is, as Zoe reminds her, a tool, valuable for what she might know, not for her skills, not for who she is, or what she works for.

As the games from TOT on have worked hard to expand Nancy’s world and tie it together, SPY shows the benefit of having a wide-open world: that the world goes on, people live and die, and secretive organizations (ATAC, Revenant, Cathedral, MI5…) plot and scheme to remake the world in their image.

This, in my view, is also a great thing. The thing that Nancy Drew books (and a lot of the early games) get wrong is that Nancy fixes (or is party to fixing) all of the problems introduced. The piano-playing girl that Nancy meets ends up with a Grandmaster as a teacher; the inheritance goes to the Worthy Widow and Her Daughter; Nancy rescues her tied-up father AND solves his case for his client all in one brilliant masterstroke.

That’s not to say that every story should have all of its threads dangling by the end, but Nancy is simply a smart and resourceful girl, working (most of the time) with her own relatively meager resources. She shouldn’t be the answer to the world’s problems, and I think it’s lovely that, especially in the Nancy games, she really isn’t. Nancy is a helper, and that’s far more valuable than being an omniscient, all-powerful being who can magically fix everyone’s problems just by being there.

The last thing I want to talk about in this introduction is how good SPY is for Nancy’s own personal lore. There’s a lot of fuss every time SPY is brought up about how “Nancy’s mom actually died when she was three!!” which, honestly, tells me that the 60s re-writes (which, yes, if you’re pedantic, started in ’59) did more damage than I had previously thought.

The original Nancy Drew books were written in the 30s by various ghostwriters, and were a little different from the yellow-bound 60s rewrites that most people consider the “old Nancy Drew books”. 30s Nancy Drew was a little closer to our games-universe Nancy; brash, outspoken, punishingly independent, and incredibly capable. She’s also a bit violent and unruly, has graduated from school at 16, lost her mother at 10, and does as she pleases with the occasional call home to reassure Carson or (more often) to ask a question about the law.

Sadly, other than taking out a few racial and societal overtones that weren’t really acceptable after 30 years — mostly by taking out any non-white characters and including different forms of bias, note — the yellow rewrites weren’t an improvement to the stories or to Nancy’s character. Nancy becomes less bold, less independent, and far more focused on describing each meal in punishing amounts of detail. The words “kindly” and “sweetly” were increasingly added after “Nancy said”, she’s far more deferential to authority, and her mother instead passes when Nancy is 3, rather than 10.

In changing the form of the media to video games, rather than books, what would eventually become HER had a choice; they could align themselves with the newest Nancy Drew books — the Nancy Drew Files and Nancy Drew on Campus, both of which were known for being Hotter and Sexier (and, in the case of Campus, ridiculously stupid) — or choose what people called “the classics” — the yellow-spine 60s rewrites, as the once-famous blue books had been all but forgotten in the 90s. In the first (and still one of the last, honestly) brilliant move of the series, HER chose to mix and match the things that made for good game fodder from (nearly, given how much the Campus books suck) every written incarnation of Nancy.

And, to their credit, they chose an important fact from the 30s: Nancy’s mother died when she was 10, not when she was 3.

Losing a parent is a defining moment no matter when it happens, but the exact effect often changes based on (among other things) the age of the child. In order for Nancy to be the kind of person who is influenced by the mystery of her mother’s death, her mother had to have died when Nancy could remember — thus, 3 is right out, as Nancy might remember tiny bits and pieces of the events leading up to and right after, but nothing else.

By taking bits and pieces of contrasting (and often contradictory) lore and making their own out of it, HER (and I’m hat-tipping Cathy and Nik especially here, given Nancy’s characterization spike beginning around WAC/TOT) gives us a version of Nancy that’s similar to the sleuth we know and love from the books and movies (ignoring the 2007 disaster) and, occasionally, TV shows, while still keeping her mostly consistent and showing us a few new flashes that make this character stand out and win her place in the Drewniverse.

Now, with all of that said, let’s move on to this game in specific, shall we?

The Title:

The Silent Spy, as a title, is one that is wonderfully mysterious and really makes you want to know more — right up until the title drop within the game itself, at which point it shifts from quite alluring to desperately sad and foreboding.

After all, “the only silent spy is a dead spy.”

As the game really is about our resident Silent Spy — Kate Drew and her actions and legacy — this is really the only title that the game could have had, and it suits it down to the ground, both with its mystery and with its sadness.

In life, Kate Drew was silenced, and in death, she is obviously necessarily silent — but Nancy reads her words, remembers her speech, listens to her voice, and, of course, hears her song, whenever the world is quiet enough. And I think that’s a wonderful dichotomy for the title to introduce before the game has even properly begun.

The Mystery:

Summoned to Scotland by a mysterious message and guided by a photograph of her mother, Nancy arrives ready to retrace her mother’s steps — only to be thrown into a world of espionage, gadgets, untraceable phone calls, and deadly mishaps. Her luggage (and her best clue about her mother) having been stolen, the presence of an old family friend who refuses to talk, an evasive skiptracer, an excitable local, and a clever intelligence agent all work together to ensure that Nancy is off-balance the minute she arrives.

All, of course, is even less what it seems than Nancy is prepared for, and she spends to game gloriously off-balance trying to keep up with the larger forces pushing and pulling her. She needs to retrace her mother’s steps, escape from certain death, dig deep into the pasts and presents of the people she meets, and do some impressive sleuthing of her own to even make the change from tool to player — and even that might not be enough to keep her safe when the dastardly minds at Revenant come a-knocking…

As a mystery — or as a collection of intertwined mysteries, honestly — SPY succeeds at what a lot of other games tried (and ultimately failed, in one way or another), which is to link all the happenings in the game together under one cohesive plot that grows more and more horrifying the more you think about it. GTH has a fandom reputation for fridge horror, but SPY holds its own easily when you consider Kate’s fatal chase, Moira’s abduction and guilt, the threats that Ewan and Alec operate under, and the life that Zoe leads on the regular.

Every action that Nancy takes benefits someone — whether it be Cathedral, Revenant, herself, or an interested third (fourth?) party — without her really meaning to, and the game is great in including another question in every reveal.

The beauty of SPY’s mystery(s) is that it takes careful reading, paying attention, and honestly replaying in order to grasp the enormity of every action. No matter how many times you play or replay, there’s something new to find — a time-sensitive conversation, an implication in a note, a theory behind the presence of a clue or a piece of (what you previously thought to be) set dressing — it honestly is limitless, and it just helps to contribute to the feeling that this is a world that Nancy isn’t meant to truly be fully immersed in.

And speaking of people who are immersed in that world…

The Suspects:

We’ll begin, for organization’s sake, with our out-and-out (current) agents first, then tackle our other suspects, then our Nancy-related people, and finish off with — for the final time in this series, as this is the last “Nancy” game — Nancy herself.

A new, yet returning character, Bridget Shaw is one of the cover identities of Zoe Wolfe — aka Samantha Quick, who Nancy impersonated in VEN and who helped the Hardy Boys in Treasure on the Tracks.

Prior to SPY, I had money for a very long time that Samantha Quick would eventually come into the game, and I was absolutely delighted with her appearance in SPY — where else would she be so well situated? Zoe is snarky, disillusioned, cynical, and sometimes downright nihilistic, but she’s also someone who took up a job that, percentage-wise, no one wants to or is able to do, because she’s alone:

“I work in the field for two reasons: one, I don’t need any help. And two, because no one would miss me if I fell off the grid.”

I love watching the ND games subvert their own formula, and Zoe is a great example of the “helper”-type suspect who really isn’t like your traditional “helper” at all. She’s there to do a job, and if sticking with Nancy helps her to do it, then that’s what she does. But she’s not there to Right some Great Wrong for the warm fuzzies of it all, or even because it’s Just and Right. She’s there because it’s her job, and her job is to play the game.

“It’ll be brief, painful, and full of garbage…but that’s life, isn’t it? And that’s the metaphor I’m riding into the grave.”

Next is our (kind of) double operative and partial culprit, Ewan McLeod (real name Sean Kent Davis) is a clever operative of Cathedral who decided that he wasn’t valued or important anywhere near as much as he should have been, and reached out to Revenant to supply them with information. Summoning Nancy to Scotland, Ewan is easily able to gain a portion of her trust as the Watcher in the Wires and is her tie to the relative safety of Cathedral.

As a culprit, Ewan is — ultimately — pitiable. Not that he’s not an egotist with a victim complex a mile wide, but when you actually look at the situation he’s in, it’s hard not to feel bad for him, even though he did it to himself. Having contacted Revenant, he’s now attempting to hold a tiger by the tail, praying it can’t eat him — and his worst fears come true, as his loved ones are threatened (“trying to keep my friends and family alive”, remember) and he’s discarded and made a target by the terrorists that he tried to use to make himself important.

Given the rather chilling threats made by Revenant, I’m inclined to believe that when we find him tied up, he didn’t do it to himself. Nancy would have noticed if the knots were too loose to have been done by a third party, and we know Revenant told him several times that if he wasn’t useful, he’d be punished.

While Ewan makes terrible choices, he’s also a pawn being played by a larger force — like everyone else in the game — and that is at least worth pity, if not forgiveness.

Next up is our former Cathedral agent and all-around tough cookie Moira Chisholm. As one of the people responsible for the events that led to Kate’s death — though no one but Revenant is responsible for killing her, note — Moira lives with guilt, regret, and a powerful sense of loneliness that only the loss of everyone you hold dear can bring.

Moira’s guilty of nothing in the present-day calamity, and helps Nancy the very best she can in her own limited power, but is ultimately a character for whom the past looms larger than the present can match. She has her hobbies, but her house is filled with memories of days when people sat on her couch and broke her teacups, not of hours reading alone.

She’s an intensely tragic character, and an example of what happens when your need to know the “truth” can get in the way of doing right by those you love. Moira lost everything to her previous job for Cathedral (who is implied to have left her, an otherwise dangerous free agent, alive because they knew (correctly!) she would become stagnant and docile under the weight of her own guilt, ouch), and yet she risks life and limb to help Nancy —not because she thinks it’ll exculpate her, but because Moira, at her core, wants to help the world, no matter what it’s taken from her.

Our final suspect is Glasgow’s resident skiptracer and unwilling pawn Alec Fell, who, along with Moira, can be traced back to Kate Drew’s death. Originally, Alec investigated a mysterious car crash — the one that killed Kate Drew — and, when he didn’t stop after a warning, had his office ransacked and burned. In the few months before the game starts, he experiences another break-in and his sister is kidnapped, with a message informing him that if he wants to guarantee her safety, to comply with Revenant’s orders.

Unlike Ewan, when pushed into a corner, Alec does his best to raise a little hell while still trying to keep his sister safe. For everything that he does on Revenant’s orders, he also helps Nancy out, finds her suitcase, locates Moira, tells Nancy where the cards are, and does his best to push back in other, little ways.

Sure Alec is guilty of a few things — most notably the fake shooting scare in Nancy’s room — but he’s a very active character, riding the rails and searching for anyone who can help put an end to this situation. It’s not for nothing that he’s a fan favorite, both for this game for the series at large, and his excellent VA and charming dialogue only make up half of his appeal.

On our Nancy side, we’ve got a few returning characters and one (semi) new one, so let’s go through them before getting (for the last time!) to the girl detective herself.

Carson Drew, father and golf model extraordinaire, is here to ground (as in steady, not punish) Nancy as she goes through this mystery. As the other person besides Nancy who was most affected by Kate’s death, Carson is an invaluable source of Kate-related knowledge, but is concerned foremost with his daughter’s safety.

For my money, the most important thing we learn about Carson here is that, well…he married the wrong woman as much as Kate married the wrong man. It’s sort of simplistic to say that their story shows that, in some cases, love doesn’t conquer all, but it’s true all the same.

Carson was happy to jet off to Scotland on occasion to visit Moira and her husband, but being happy to take vacations is a very different thing from a life constantly shifting and changing. He’s a prosecutor, so he has a strong sense of justice, but also has a strong sense of stability — he chose a career with a set trajectory and clearly defined rules.

Kate Austin, however, was a journalist who occasionally consulted for a Spy Organization when life got a little too boring (it’s important to note that she wasn’t a straight-out spy like Moira — she was far too free-spirited for that). She had all of Nancy’s inquisitiveness but more people skills than Nancy will probably ever have, and made friends easily.

It’s easy to see how she would have been attracted to the All-American, hardworking, solidly intelligent, emotionally balanced man, just as it’s easy to see how the slightly flashy, clever, inquisitive, intuitive redhead would have attracted him.

If this is starting to feel like I’m describing two other characters here…well, longtime readers of this meta series already know what happens when I use a paragraph to describe characters without using their names.

Kate is important in the game in that we’re shown her differences from and —more enlightening — similarities to Nancy. Nancy’s actions in this game are reflections on what Kate did (and what she would have done) as much as they show how the daughter diverges from the mother. And while Nancy doesn’t have her mother’s people skills or ease of making friendships, what she does have is her mother’s – and I’m going to use this word purposely — flightiness.

At the end of the day, Carson couldn’t be with Kate when she flitted off around the world, and Ned can’t be with Nancy when she does the same.

(I also find it interesting that we deal in the games only with Carson’s side of the family, and never even have a mention of Nancy’s maternal grandparents. Yes, I know Kate could have been an only child and her parents could already be dead…but I do like the possibility that they blame Carson for Kate’s death (entirely undeservedly!) and thus cut off contact. But this meta is for, well, meta, not fanfic.)

Ned Nickerson plays an important role in SPY in that he tries to help Nancy the best he can, even to the point of breaking and entering in her house (though really, it’s just entering, since he has permission) to find a document for her.

Ned comes off brilliantly in this game, but it’s important to note that his big, impressive (yet charmingly understated) speech isn’t to Nancy, but to Carson. And it doesn’t sway Nancy, it sways Carson. Because, at the end of the day, Carson can relate to lots of the pieces that make Ned what he is, and the situation that Ned finds himself in.

He’s wonderful, as boyfriends go; he calls her, encourages her, offers oddly prescient hints…but he doesn’t go with her. It’d be easy enough to make that a point in the series that, though we don’t see it happen, Ned often accompanies Nancy on her escapades, but instead we’re told — often through contention — that the exact opposite is true.

Ned is solid, true, intelligent, emotionally balanced and kind, but above all, Ned is stable. He’s enrolled in college — in an honors frat — and plays sports, attends his classes faithfully, remembers important dates…the list goes on and on. These are all wonderful characteristics for a boyfriend, but he, like Carson with Kate, ultimately isn’t what Nancy needs out of a relationship — and she is certainly not, like Kate with Carson, what Ned needs out of a relationship.

At the end of the day, both would need to compromise — Ned would need to set off with her sometimes, and Nancy would need to stay close to home sometimes — in order to make the other happy. And, well…nothing we have in any of the games says that either one would do that in the long term. Sure, Nancy returns home after the fight in CAP for ASH…but is in Egypt the very next game — immediately followed by Colorado, Georgia, and Scotland.

And honestly, this is the basis on which I disagree with Ned/Nancy as a couple. It serves neither one and, as we see in quite a few games where they squabble, they can make each other worse.

And speaking of our resident sleuth, let’s talk about Nancy Drew before wrapping up this character section.

In SPY, Nancy is — as mentioned above — a tool, used by both sides to get what they want without caring how it personally affects her. The big thing we learn about Nancy in this — and one of my favorite characteristics about her — is that Nancy is pretty ruthless. To me, it makes sense that, to get the information she wants, Nancy does what a terrorist organization tells her to because 1) it’s not her home immediately at risk, and 2) most importantly, Nancy has done bad things in the name of a good end in pretty much every game.

Lying, stealing, breaking priceless artifacts, endangering others — none of these are really new to Nancy, and what SPY does is brings that to the forefront. Sure, you as the player have the option not to do what Revenant tells Nancy to do…but then you miss out on big parts of Kate’s characterization — and, more importantly, a big part of Nancy’s.

In an unprecedented move, I’m going to reference National Treasure again, and quote part of Ben’s speech before he steals the Declaration:

“[A toast] to high treason…here’s to men who did what was considered wrong, in order to do what they thought was right — what they knew was right.”

To me, that shows us why Nancy does what she does — in SPY, and in every other game where she lies, cheats, and steals her way to the truth. She does it because, at the end of the day, Nancy is a person who is ruthless in her pursuit of her goal. And that’s a valuable trait.

Especially when one is dealing with spies, terrorists, and shady government operatives.

The Favorite:

I love most of SPY, so I’ll stick here with the things that especially stick out to me.

As covered above, I love: what this game does for the lore of the ND world; ‘Samantha Quick’; the many motivations of our suspects, and the emotional resonance that this game has.

Beyond that, there are a lot of little things. I absolutely love that they got the relative of the guy who plays Carson to play Nancy when she was little — that’s adorable to me. I love the cookie-making minigame, the outfit swap for Bridget/Zoe, the voice work for all of our suspects and helpers, and the beautiful locations (especially the spy cabin, both exterior and interior).

My favorite moment in the game is a sad one, but I’m a mercurial kind of person, so you should have really expected that. It’s actually Moira’s log/diary/letter to Kate (it functions as all three) after Cathedral deactivates her as an agent. I love a lot about it — the sad, almost desperate feeling to the words, the pen color changing as the seasons do — but nothing is better done than Moira’s last entry:

“It’s winter. It doesn’t matter that it’s winter, does it?”

My favorite puzzle is probably the zip-lining one. Sure, it’s easy, and sure, the animation makes me a little motion-sick, but it’s just….zip lines are just cool. That’s all there is to it. It appeals to the spy-loving idiot in me, and I think big-woosh-go-fast is stupid cool.

I also have to give a hat-tip to Kate’s letter — turning a fandom meme into a heartwarming story? Nik, you mad genius — and Nancy’s letter to Kate at the end. Both are beautifully written and are the perfect centerpiece to their respective characters, and both always put a smile on my face (and, at times, a tear in my eye) when reading them.

The last thing I really do have to mention here is Logan’s quasi-reappearance. I mentioned this in my “Top 5 Surprising Moments” meta, but I love, love, love that Logan is a Cathedral operative, and that he reported on Nancy during SAW. Not only does this continue to open up Nancy’s world, but it also shows that there are consequences to Nancy’s actions. She’s in rare form as far as rudeness goes in SAW, and SPY weaponizes that against her, giving Cathedral (and Revenant) a way to weaponize her feelings about her mother’s death and her — to be frank — inability to let things lie as they are.

The Un-Favorite:

There are a few things that aren’t quite my favorite in SPY, so let’s run through those as well.

First, in the common refrain of “small visual distinctions are difficult for me personally”, I didn’t like that there wasn’t enough contrast between a plain (on the bottom half) cookie and the orange/purple jelly. The shadow on the screen makes it kind of difficult to tell them apart, especially if there’s sprinkles and/or frosting on top of it, and I found that mildly frustrating, even though I love the minigame itself.

The second thing I don’t like is the option to skip the dialogue. Yes, this is present in most of the newer games, and I don’t like it in them either, but it’s especially egregious in SPY and LIE. Both of these games really rely on hints given in the dialogue (and of course, in the written materials hidden around the game) in order to get a full, clear view of what’s going on. The option is great on repeat plays, but I really do wish that it was disabled if it was your first save file on the game.

The last annoying thing is the Jabberwocky puzzle — or rather, the percentage of the jabberwocky puzzle that the player actually has to do. The puzzle as it stands feels very confusing, and the “hints” you get are quite unintuitive.

The record tells you basically how to create the encrypted message — it’s the first letter from each green word, the second from each orange word, etc., arranged in the order they appear in the poem — but when you start the poem, Nancy has already basically completed this step, and it’s up to you to do the actual decoding just through process of elimination.

It’s a puzzle of letter deduction, like in TMB and the minigame in ASH — and these are normally my favorite puzzles! — but it’s cloaked in the disguise of an encryption puzzle, and for that, it’s incredibly irritating.

The Fix:

So how would I fix The Silent Spy?

The first thing I’d do, which you can probably guess based on the above section, is to fix how the Jabberwocky poem is presented. Even a bit of dialogue establishing what the player actually has to do versus what Nancy does for the player would be helpful in working through it without bothering making the encrypted message oneself, and would set the player up to actually know what they’re doing, versus the mass of confusion that comes with the puzzle.

The only other change I would make would to put in one more flashback — that of 10-year-old Nancy’s perspective shortly after Kate’s death, perhaps after the funeral. We spend a lot of time in flashback seeing Kate before her death, and I think it would add to just a little bit more of seeing Nancy’s relationship with her mother if we could see the Drew house with her recently gone.

(And perhaps, see or hear Hannah? Please?)

The Silent Spy is a game that I find, on the whole, to be one of the best that Nik penned, and certainly a fitting end to the series of “Nancy Games” that gives us a little more perspective on our teeth sleuth. There are as many moments of joy as of sorrow, but in the end the player is left with the feeling that Nancy’s world is a little better for knowing more about her mother, and that whatever else Kate did and was, she left behind a world (both in game and breaking the fourth wall) that was better — and had ways to become even better than that — than it was when she lived in it.

[e-vasong]

Feelings on Five and killing????👀

thanks for the validation yall im weeping

me, who directly begged to be asked this in the tags: 

so. i’m not sure how popular/unpopular this take on five’s relationship with killing is; though I’ll say that it’s not one that I’ve seen a lot in the circles that I run in.  

obligatory disclaimer, i guess? art is inherently interpretive.  I have feelings about this topic, and I have a strong personal interpretation of the scenes that we were shown in canon, but the opposite interpretation is just as valid.

(me, looking at art, in tears: its about..... the personal experience)

Anyways, with that out of the way, here is how I interpret Five’s relationship with violence:

I think Five likes killing.  I think Five really likes killing. 

Which does, I admit, fly completely in the face of Luther’s dialogue with Five in season one.  After an entire episode of Luther being discomfited and concerned by Five’s attitude towards killing, Five says: “You know, I never enjoyed it...the killing.  I mean, I was good at my work.  And I...took pride in it.  But it never gave me pleasure.”

That said, I think there are a couple reasons why we shouldn’t take Five’s explanation there at face-value.  First and foremost, I think that Five is an unreliable narrator, especially in regards to himself.  He’s not quite...insecure, but I think he’s very conscious of how his siblings perceive him and how their reactions could benefit him/get in the way, and on top of that I think that Five’s enjoyment of bloodshed is somewhat of a subconscious thing for him, especially in season one.  (This post has an interesting take on that latter point; their feelings about Five’s relationship with murder aren’t a perfect match with my own, but it has some really interesting interpretations).

Two, for all Five’s talk about there being no such thing as “good people and bad people,” I think Five does distinguish between civilians and threats.  His work for the Commission involved killing a lot of people who were...otherwise unrelated to the deaths of his siblings and the end of the world.  And even then, he doesn’t express guilt.  I believe him when he says that he didn’t take pleasure in it...but the choice to be honest about the fact that he felt professional pride is interesting.  And to that claim’s credit, in the flashbacks we see of him doing work for the Commission across both seasons, he seems pretty flat?  He’s clearly just getting the job done, with little emotional expression one way or the other.

In contrast, so long as Five isn’t actively getting his ass kicked in seasons one and two (Hazel and Chacha as well as the Swedes all do get one over on Five occasionally, and Five clearly does not enjoy that), he...is grinning.  At Griddy’s, when he blows up the Commission HQ, during his initial spar with Lila when he wins and is strangling her, during his slaughter of the Board (where, again, he makes an exception for a civilian and goes out of his way to avoid hurting her, though notably seems willing to do so if he needs to).  He smiles a lot during his assassination of the Board.  He stops to enjoy a glass of water.  He definitely enjoys capturing Carmichael.  And the Handler knows.  He’s pensive when they go to meet up, and she’s mocking when she says: “I thought you’d be buzzing from the slaughter.”

And he deflects, of course: everything I did today, I did for my family.  But he pauses.  And like I said, I don’t think Five is a reliable narrator of his own behavior.

Which...brings me to my last point, which is that I think Five enjoys killing because he does in the comics.  I think the stuff I said above stands on its own, and I’m pretty intent, personally, on separating comics!canon from show!canon, because they’re very different.  But the show does import some key characterization elements, even if they’re re-envisioned, and I would be lying if I said that my entire interpretation of these events wasn’t influenced by my favorite panel from the comics.  Plus, there’s one extra element that it adds to this meta that’s very important to me.

(transcription: “You cut out my humanity with a scalpel--like a malignancy.  I wake up in the morning with the finest impulses known to man--and thanks to you--I slaughter them.  Every.  Single.  Day.  Except today.”)

Now whether Five feels the way he does about killing because of experiments from the Commission, or whether it was just the way he responded to forty years of complete isolation and then several more being forced to work as an assassin, I have no idea.  But what I love this panel is also something that canon hints at in the scene with Five and the Handler.  Which is that Five enjoys the violence, especially against his enemies, and he knows that it’s wrong.  And he hates that part of himself, especially as he comes to realize that it exists, and would actively choose to resist it if he could.  Yet needs must as the devil drives, and Five keeps ending up in situations where its an asset.

So when it comes to Five and killing, the angst is less a matter of Five feeling sad about all the people he’s killed, and more a matter of the fact that...he doesn’t.  At best, he feels distant professionalism and detachment towards the people he’s assassinated, and in certain situations he outright enjoys it.  But Five is smart enough, and good enough, to know that that is wrong, and to be disgusted by it.  And that’s where the guilt comes in for him. 

[heyjude19-writing]

Im the list anon again and boy do I have more for you but this time I also have some questions as well if your time allows and you are willing to answer of course. First with the other things I loved:

1) the fact that Ron warmed up to Draco so quickly! I genuinely think thats so much in character. Ron is not a distrustful person and as a middle child as they come is very easygoing and would for sure make stupid jokes at Draco

2) The patronus. My god the Patronus. I seriously put the phone down and made a small slow clap during that chapter. At first I was like hmmmm *insert unsure kombucha girl face* because almost all fanfics have him with a dragon patronus and leave it at that (and lets be honest at this point my expectations of you were quite high dont blame me blame your bloody brilliant writing) but then, and I dont know if you did this on purpose or not (I have a feeling you did) but the fact that the dragon was the same (pale white) wounded but still feral dragon that Hermione FREEED (!) from a bank (£££) dungeon, malnourished and used for its nature, surrounded by darkness, wealth and misery!! And it was Hermione who broke its chains!!!!! Is just *chefs fucking kiss* slow clap*

3) the way you describe sex scenes are so natural! Ive never read a fanfic or book that doesnt make me gag a little bit (I am not a fan of smut at all but ill go with it because of a good story) until I read yours. Its so simple but yet intricate and you make the entire act so intriguing and normal and intimate. Bravo.

4) I LOVE SASHA. I love that Theo fell for her head over heels and the way you portrayd her reminded me of a friend of mine who works as a sous-chef in London so I always pictured her when reading it!

5) Dracos inner voice is ON POINT. Like I genuinely think you shoud own the rights to that character now.

6) Ill say it again. I love Ginny. You should also own the rights to her character too.

7) my interest for Quiddich (even when reading the books/wathcing the movies) was on par, if not lower than Hermiones. You managed to get me interested in that too so yes another slow clap to you

7.1) Also such a clever career for Draco!! Made si much sense!

Now to some questions

A) What was the deal with Malfoy referring to Ginny as Weasly and refusing to aknowledge her Potter surname. And why did everyone kept correcting him? It was hilarious granted but I wanted to know whether the reason you included this time and time again had to do wih something deeper? Or was this included as just a funny recurring joke?

B) Why did you choose for Draco to have a “fantasy” to produce a patronus and not for example for him to have had to do that after theyd exchanged “i love yous”. Very interesting angle and i liked that it was sort of a loophole to all the ‘death eaters cant have patronuses’ but quite curious on the thought process

C) Why did you opt for Draco to remove his mark? Do you think that stands as reward for him more or for Hermione? Very smart solution by the way

D) if you have the time- Could you please elaborate a tad more on what the soul-bonding means? Why was it so taboo? At furst hand it seems like a very romantic/amazing thing to do with your partner right?

Lastly- Do you ever itch to make a second part to this? And in the most acceptable case that you dont, I always wondered what you had in mind for them in the future- because of the soul bonding thing, you mentioned that the generational curses will be erased, which means I guess that the Malfoys can have more than one child now, and girls as well. (I cannot believe im asking for this as I am the one to avoid any pregnancy fanfics but) do you imagine them with children and if yes, how many? How do they integrate muggle devices(I know youd agree wit me that Hermione would definitively bring some muggle stuff over!) and which devices would Draco really secretly like?

Pleasewriteasecondpartwhereyouelaborateyourthoughtsonthisthankyou.

Ok rant done. :D

List anon! You’re back with another amazing ask. I’ll do my best!

1.) I like to think Ron matured a lot post-war (not enough to stop making terrible jokes, though.)

2.) Regarding your beautiful analysis of my specific dragon breed for Draco’s patronus: How many points would you like for your Hogwarts house of choice? I will add that according to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the Ironbelly’s scales are normally a metallic grey. I will also add that I subscribe more to book canon than movie canon. In the book version of events of the Gringotts escape, Harry breaks the chains and Hermione (with eventual help once the boys catch on) destroys the ceiling so it can have a way out. The partially blind dragon does the rest of the work on its own.

3.) Thank you, that’s very flattering.

4.) Does your friend also get you into fancy restaurants and can they make salted caramel bread pudding???

5.) Thank you, it was one of my favorite aspects of writing this story.

6.) Thank you, she’s so fun to write and flesh out from her book portrayal.

7.) Haha, I felt so validated by that line of dialogue in Cursed Child when Draco tells Harry he wanted to play quidditch professionally, but wasn’t good enough.

Now to some answers:

A.) It’s definitely a recurring joke. It’s up to the reader to interpret Draco’s actions here: is he doing it to be a massive troll? Or is he genuinely not retaining the information of her married name because he considers this fact so unimportant that he does not bother to keep it in his brain? Troll, snob, or both, you can decide!

B.) I’ll address the second part of this first, because it was not intended as a loophole. I 1000% do not understand the “death eaters can’t have patronuses” thing. It makes absolutely no sense. Snape has a Patronus. But beyond that… Umbridge has a Patronus (a cat). If we’re letting that woman have a Patronus, then yeah, I think Draco can cast one. As for the vision that Draco used to conjure it… up to you whether that’s a fantasy or a glimpse of a certain ritual actually working. Draco’s thoughts on the matter: “An image of such striking tangibility that he might have already lived it, or perhaps experienced time in such a way that he lived it now.”

C.) I wanted Draco to have a choice, obviously a recurring theme for him in RN. For my characterization of him, that symbol on his arm causes him nothing but shame and self-loathing (see the end of chapter 36 during his heart-to-heart with Hermione). He’d already exercised almost every known avenue to rid himself of it before Hermione entered his life (he lists these in chapter 44). Hermione already loved him (and has told him so) by the time she’s figured out how to remove it: “I love the man you are today and I will love that man tomorrow, bare forearm or not. I simply wanted you, for once, to have the choice. It’s your body.”

D.) Ooh anon, you are tempting me here. I really hate to be coy, but you might see some future writing on this very topic.

I can at least answer the taboo part: I think soul magic in general (horcruxes, the use of unicorn blood) is quite taboo in the HP universe. As no one knows what happens after death (not even ghosts, Nearly Headless Nick says as much when Harry asks him point-blank in OoTP) I think most magical folk would think the intense ritual (blending magical cores) an unnecessary thing anyway. As Draco explains in chapter 48, since no one actually knows the effects or if it works, it’s considered a bit over-the-top since it’s probably futile anyway. It is also not a Vow with a death component; Narcissa is obviously alive in this story even though Lucius is already dead. I wrote the generational curse protection theory in as a dig at Cursed Child for the way they handled Astoria’s character.

The idea of it I think is romantic, but I will stress it is very dependent upon the intent of the two participants. To quote Draco in chapter 48 again: “To twine one’s soul to another showed a willingness to not only physically tether one’s self during your time here on earth, but to commit to a blending of your magical cores, putting faith in your magic to recognize its bonded counterpart in another life. Should other lives even exist.”

If you re-read Draco’s experience during the bonding ceremony in chapter 51 (starting from this bit: “The cognizance of his own powers never felt sharper, more familiar, but suddenly another power pulsed within to join with his.”) you might find it bears a resemblance to the trajectory of their relationship.

Lastly- I’ve left Draco and Hermione to their wedded bliss. I’ve got nothing planned for them beyond where they are in the final lines of chapter 51. I don’t have that itch to write more into their future because it would feel forced. Draco laid out his two envisioned futures with Hermione in chapter 48 when they discuss having or not having children. They are happy and content in the life they chose together. That’s all I ever wanted for them.

You will see more from this story though. I have an entire series of one-shots and outtakes from the published Remain Nameless timeline that I’ll start posting soon.

Thank you so much list anon! These were fun to answer!

[septiembrre]

Rio Headcanons

Tagged by the wonderful @foxmagpie

What are your headcanons about Rio’s family? Siblings? Parents? Lifestyle growing up?

I really love the idea of Rio having been raised by a supportive, healthy, loving, beautiful nuclear family. I personally have imagined him with siblings -- sisters! Cousins! I think his respect for women and their power has to come from somewhere and it’s probably a matriarch. He has a strong handle on parenting and I think he must be modeling his own caregivers... 

But, @foxmagpie pointed out the black & white vintage photos in his closet...  Obviously, I had seen them but I just understood them to be like my family’s own old photographs. I had thought -- they’re just his ancestors, probably his grandparents or bisabuelos. But, then I realized there’s no sign of sisters, any siblings or of his parents in his apartment.  The Good Girls set design team loves a ridiculously terrible photo prop (hello old Dean/Beth family photos) and you know they would have been down to make the same thing for Rio... but alas. All we have are those photos of Rio + Marcus, an ambiguous baby picture and the black & white photo and it’s probably intentional. 

I come from a small, atypical Mexican-American family structure myself, but I feel for him. I always headcanoned that he had a dad who had died when he was a kid or a teenager and that maybe his mom was still around and involved in his & Marcus’ life. But, quizas no? 

I’m curious about how much Beth knows now about Rio’s family structure from Rhea. She knows Rhea’s a single mom, and her co-parent was out of the picture for a spell. But, I think Rhea would have also mentioned involvement or support from Marcus’s other set of abuelos/her former in-laws? 

So... who were Rio’s caregivers? His grandparents? No sisters??? We should all collectively DM Manny and ask him to share his own Rio backstory headcanons. Haha, watch -- the show is totally going to ret-con this in Season 4. 

It’s interesting overall how the writer’s deploy family world-building for the characters. Dean’s mom is the only one on-screen -- and Dean’s parents overall have gotten more build out than any other family history combined (wild!). I know that’s influenced by them casting Jessica Walter who is phenom, but expanding out the family histories is such a rich area for the show creators to play in if they choose to go there. All of our main protagonists have deceased parents. I think it’s been a choice on the show to play into a lack of safety net and support for the women. For better or for worse, Beth, Ruby & Annie are at a point where they are it for their children.  

That being said -- I would love to meet Stan’s parents! And I would love to get information about Rio’s coming-into-crime especially as a parallel to Beth’s experience. It’s the parallel we would all want and the parallel we deserve. (Dear show, Stop with the Boland family parallels, PLEASE! If I have to hear about Dean’s scummy dad one more time--). 

But, yes, I’m very invested in Beth & Annie’s, Ruby’s, Stan’s, and, of course, Rio’s families and hope we get to see more characterization unfold over the next seasons.

What are your headcanons for Rio and Rhea’s relationship? How do you think they met, at what point did Rhea learn about his work, was Rio in love with her, etc.?

I’m so curious about what attracts Rio to people/his love interests. It’s becoming clear what attracts him to Beth...  But, I wonder about has attracted him to others. 

While Beth & Rhea are both moms (haha, and beautiful, and well-endowed with the boobs), that’s in the present time on the show -- Rio was attracted to Rhea before she was a mom. I wonder what he looks for? What did he see in Dylan? 

Hmmm. 

What are your headcanons about Rio’s and Mick’s relationship? Did they meet through crime? Are they lifelong friends?

I want them to be childhood friends!!!! I want that so badddddd!!! 

Oh, god, can you imagine a flashback to them young in crime?! Like late teens or early 20s? Ha, as a parallel to the Beth + Ruby scene/origin story? I would die. DIE.

Do you think Rio’s been arrested before Beth got him arrested in 1.10? When, and what for?

Ha, I don’t think he’s been arrested for anything significant.  He’s plenty sanctimonious about keeping his name out of everything. 

If Rio weren’t a crime boss, what jobs do you think he’d be good at? Why?

I mean he’s probably great a math, phenom at managing a huge team/multiple business ventures, and super charismatic. What couldn’t he do? 

I think he was probably pushed to crime because of lack of opportunity for MOC and the need for money. This does make me think he came up poor. But, I think he stayed in crime because he’s so good at it, and likes the flexibility, the creativity, the $$$, and the power. 

I think he could go legit and still be pulling in decent buck with all of his business fronts but he doesn’t choose to. 

What are Rio’s hobbies outside of work and Marcus? What do you think he’d get up to on a day with absolutely no responsibilities?

He’s obviously an art heaux. The real question is WHAT’S HIS MEDIUM???? If he actually produces art like the abstract stuff up in his house, I would scream. I can see him being into photography when the mood strikes him and he has time. #hipster

I like the idea of Rio taking cooking classes in some sort of exclusive, foodie way (1:1 with a chef, or a compa who is a fly line cook). 

We know he plays tennis and I also imagine he boxes and works out at the type of high-end gym I could only dream of. It probably never smells of sweat, and all the machines are top-end, brand new. I mentioned in a post a while ago that I wasn’t sure if I wanted Rio to be my boyfriend, my bff, or to adopt me -- and I stand by it.  

Who do you think Dylan is to Rio (a friend, an associate, someone he was dating?) and why?

I do lean towards friend/associate/some one he’s fucked. Rio was very handsy with Dylan’s person. Obviously, in real life Manny & Adelfa are married, and I think they were leaning heavily on that intimacy in the scene. 

But Rio also didn’t kiss Dylan? Which leads me back to -- damn, Rio. You were fronting so hard. Like... that was high-school-level showmanship. 

What do you think Rio’s goals for the future are?

I think he wants to be his own boss, I think he likes being at the top of the food chain, and I think he wants to stay in crime because he still sees opportunities. 

I’m so curious as to what his $$$ bench marks are?

Beth’s are current financial security and probably college for all of her little ones. So what it for Rio?

- College for Marcus? 

- Inheritance for Marcus?

- Inheritance for all of his (nonexistent) family?

It has to be more than that. He’s already hit these benchmarks based off of the status symbols in the show (the G-Wagon, the quality of furniture in his loft, Rhea’s offer of maybe like a $5-10k check to Beth. Beth’s not family!).

What do you think Rio is bad at (cooking, dancing, singing, etc.)? How come?

I don’t think he can bake.

I also don’t seem him being good at boldly lying to people? It’s definitely not his style. He’s more of a lying by omission type of person. I don’t see him being able to spin a tale like Beth, but he also doesn’t have her white privilege/whole suburban mom aesthetic. 

Hm, I haven’t rewatched the show in a minute but I think the only time we’ve seen him boldly lie is to Beth -- when he lies about the nature of their relationship. Haha, and he’s really bad at it. Maybe this isn’t the fairest thing to judge him on. But, I think his lying relies on purposeful silence. 

Why do you think Rio is drawn to Beth?

I think Rio was drawn to Beth because she’s a survivor, she’s scrappy and she’s smart. I think he’s drawn to how quick she is on her feet. Beth has limited awareness but she can be really good at navigating what’s going for her and leveraging it for her gain (and Rio’s). I think he’s also been drawn to her because she’s a parent, and she can be really brave (I would say reckless!! Beth, stop endangering yourself!).

Beth’s also like absurdly beautiful. Christina is ethereal and they try to make her ... frumpy or something in the show. But... we have eyes. And Rio certainly has eyes for her figure, and her face, and like all the attributes and isn’t shy about letting her know. 

Why do you think Rio didn’t kill Beth? Was it their past, his present feelings for her, because he needed her business? Some combination?

I think Rio sees a kindred spirit in Beth and at this point (post-Season 3), she’s in his life now. Despite all that she’s done to him, he seems completely unable to extricate himself from her. I think this due to his present past feelings for her. The business is a bonus, a front if you will. 

In Season 2, there were these questions for Beth about whether all of it was real -- if she meant something to Rio, if Beth could walk back all of her crimes so far and retreat into anonymity. In Season 3, we know that Beth can’t let go of crime, and that she’s capable of the same dark deeds as Rio, and we know that Rio did care for her, cares for her still apparently because he’s very much in his feelings. Those Season 3 picnic table scenes? Wow. 

Ah, can you believe these two are going to like... have some sort of development in their relationship again? Obviously, it will be full of strife and conflict. But isn’t it wild that we have another Brio sex scene in store for us one day? Jenna Ban’s comment, “You don't go from having the hottest sex of your life to wanting someone dead without conflicted feelings” is just the BIGGEST TEASE.  How are our bbs going to be intimate with each other again? 

OKAY THIS ENDED UP BEING SUPER LONG. Jeez... If you’ve gotten this far, thank you for engaging with my headcanons. Lmk what you think :-) 

[hollygoeslightly]

Sanditon: The Sense & Sensibility Connection

@fortunatelylori​ and I first started talking way back during the incredibly long wait for the final season of Game of Thrones, when we were still sweet summer children and far less bitter than we are today. After GOT broke our hearts clean in two, we decided we needed to find a new shared obsession. We made our way through a few shows – some of them great (Narcos) and some of them just okay (The Discovery of Witches) – until one day a very attractive, very wet and very naked Theo James appeared on my dash. I sent @fortunatelylori​ the GIF set with the question, “so when did Theo James get this hot?” and she made the very smart decision that Sanditon would be our next watch.

Expecting a fun, easy, paint-by-numbers Jane Austen adaption, we were both incredibly surprised to find that not only is Sanditon grittier than other period dramas, but it also has fascinating and complex characters, interesting writing choices and is overall, a show that we both genuinely really love. It also happens to be a show that we both have a lot to say about.

If you’ve read @fortunatelylori​‘s metas before, then you know you’re in for a treat. If you haven’t, prepare yourself for just how disgustingly good she is at analysing and understanding TV – she’s our fandom’s Meta Queen after all. We’ve been wanting to do a meta collab for quite a while now and it turns out a naked Theo James ended up providing the perfect opportunity. Who knew?

So, with that in mind, here is our first attempt at a meta collab. Which is really just a condensed version of our conversations – minus the swearing, animal pics and Theo James’ bare arse.

* * *

It’s no surprise to anyone, at this point, that Andrew Davies wears his Austen influences on his sleeve in Sanditon. You can find easter eggs for most of Austen’s work, from the famous Pride and Prejudice to the obscure Lady Susan.

However, Sense and Sensibility seems to be one work that hasn’t insipired much comparison from the fandom. And it’s perhaps for that reason that Sandion’s last two episodes were so hard to digest and why so many question marks were raised in regards to Charlotte’s characterization.

In this project we aim to dispel some of that confusion and attempt to put into prespective the character arcs of both Sidney and Charlotte in:

Sidlotte: A parallel journey between Sense and Sensibility by @fortunatelylori​

As well as delve deeper into Charlotte’s POV through out the season finale in:

Charlotte Heywood: From Sensibility to Sense by @and-holly-goes-lightly​

Charlotte Heywood: From Sensibility to Sense

It is easy to dismiss Charlotte Heywood as simply another stereotypical plucky period drama heroine. At first glance, Charlotte appears to be cut from the same cloth as other Austen protagonists Elizabeth Bennett and Emma Woodhouse – strong willed, outspoken, inquisitive and incredibly charming. While Charlotte certainly does exhibit a number of personality traits borrowed from other Austen protagonists – this is Andrew Davies love letter to Austen after all – it would be a mistake to think that Charlotte isn’t a complex and interesting character all of her own. Charlotte’s character development may be far more understated than Sidney’s and not as all-encompassing as Esther’s, but her coming-of-age story is vital in driving the narrative and laying the ground work for S2 (if and when that happens).

I have spoken previously about the beginning of Charlotte’s character development here, as 1x07 presented a noticeable change in Charlotte’s behaviour. Charlotte began the series as a true romantic who wore her heart on her sleeve and had total confidence in her judgement and beliefs – overall, she tended to err more on the side of sensibility than sense. However, by the beginning of 1x07, Charlotte is noticeably reticent and emotionally guarded, struck by the knowledge that she is both in love with Sidney and that her once unguarded heart is now very much at risk. Despite Sidney’s declaration of love at the end of the episode (“I believe I am my best self, my truest self, when I’m with you”), 1x08 opens with an introspective Charlotte. When discussing Sidney with Georgiana, Charlotte appears blissfully in love, but noticeably anxious about what Sidney’s declaration means.

Charlotte - “We spoke after the regatta and he said he felt his truest self when he was with me.”

Georgiana - “Why would he say that?”

Charlotte - “I’ve been asking myself the same question. I couldn’t sleep last night for thinking on it.”

By the time the credits roll on the season finale, Charlotte’s character development is very much underway, with 1x08 setting the framework for exploring a Charlotte no longer ruled by sensibility, but by sense (Davies, there better be a S2 or so help me God *shakes fist at sky*).

However, before I discuss just how Charlotte’s character development plays out in 1x08, let’s go back to the beginning of the series and Charlotte’s arrival in Sanditon. I’ve talked quite a bit about Sidney’s instant attraction to Charlotte and how his feelings for her influence their interactions (for better or worse), but I’ve yet to explore the beginnings of Charlotte’s feelings for Sidney and how those feelings tie into Charlotte’s character growth. While Sidney and Charlotte’s first meeting in 1x01 is defined by just how badly it went (“new maid?”), this isn’t Charlotte’s first introduction to Sidney. Charlotte is first introduced to Sidney – well, a poor artistic rendering of him at least – upon her arrival at Trafalgar House. Taking in Tom’s truly ostentatious design choices, Charlotte stops in front of a large portrait of Sidney, which takes pride of place in the Parker’s entryway. It is apparent that Charlotte’s curiosity is immediately piqued by the rather imposing work, curiosity that is further increased by Tom’s unhelpful description of his enigmatic younger brother.

“He’s a man of affairs, a man of business – importing, exporting – he’s here, there and everywhere.”

Charlotte is as instantly attracted to Sidney as Sidney is to her upon their first meeting on the clifftops. However, while Sidney’s attraction to Charlotte is driven by her honesty, implicit kindness and strength of character, Charlotte’s initial curiosity and attraction to Sidney lays with his status an outlier and her inability to understand his intentions (as well as the fact that he is, without question, a total babe). As @fortunatelylori points out, Charlotte thrives on honesty (and sometimes just the appearance of honesty), and is immediately cautious of those who, like Sidney, keep their cards close to their chest. Despite catching glimpses of Sidney at his best and truest self, in attempting to understand his motivations, Charlotte often misconstrues his emotional disconnect as dishonesty. She cannot reconcile the loyal, kind and charming man she is attracted to with the prejudiced, withholding and taciturn man she assumes his behaviour indicates. When Charlotte’s father warned her that people in Sanditon may not be as they appear, Charlotte was on the lookout for a wolf in sheep’s clothing (notice her changing opinion on Edward and Clara, for example). She had not accounted for the opposite – that Sidney’s brusqueness was well crafted armour developed as a result of trauma.

Following Georgiana’s kidnap and eventual rescue in London, Charlotte wrestles with the knowledge that her tendency towards sensibility and her belief that emotional vulnerability equals honesty, has blinded her to Otis’ true nature and has caused her to make inaccurate assumptions about Sidney’s motivations.  

“I hardly know what to think anymore… about anything. I’ve always felt so certain of my judgement and now I see I’ve been blinded by sentiment and naivety. I’ve got it all so wrong. No wonder your brother has such a poor opinion of me.”

By the time Sidney asks her to dance at the masquerade ball in London at the end of 1x06, Charlotte’s whole world has undergone a seismic shift. Her experience with Sidney and Otis has shown that she must recalibrate her world view. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is an overwhelming undertaking. Charlotte’s past confidence in her judgement stems from her usually good ability to read people – her biggest mistake was not misunderstanding Sidney and Otis’ motivations, but not accounting for how trauma can shape someone’s world view (in fairness, this is not something Charlotte could understand until she experienced it herself) and assuming everyone, like her, comes from a place of good intentions. These are valuable, but hard lessons to learn and unfortunately for Charlotte, these lessons are quickly followed by the realisation that she is in love with Sidney, as well as Eliza’s sudden reappearance. Taking all this into account, it’s easy to see why Charlotte spends 1x07 introspective and emotionally guarded.

Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Davies’ chooses to open 1x08 with multiple shots of Charlotte walking alone along the beach deep in thought. Not only has Charlotte wrestled with her feelings for Sidney, but she spent the previous day (1x07) convinced that Sidney did not return her feelings due to the apparent reestablishment of his relationship with Eliza, as well as feeling as though she has been found lacking in comparison to the elegant, cultured and incredibly wealthy other woman. I know many people have attributed Charlotte’s noticeable reservation in 1x08 as passivity in the face of her developing relationship with Sidney. However, I don’t believe that is the case, merely that at this point in Charlotte’s character development she has made the terrifying realisation that giving power over your heart to someone you love leaves you incredibly vulnerable to heartache. After all, Sidney’s abandonment of Charlotte for Eliza at the masquerade ball at the end of 1x06, gave her a small lesson in just how painful love can be. As a result, the Charlotte that meets Sidney’s eyes across Sanditon’s completed streets at the beginning of 1x08, is one of sense over sensibility – hopeful in her love for Sidney and anxiously waiting for the other shoe to drop.

This is reinforced by her scene with Georgiana prior to the midsummer ball. Strip away the regency set design and costuming, and this scene could be easily transplanted to any modern romantic comedy – our young heroine confiding in her friend about her developing love for the male hero. Sounds familiar, right?

“You judge Sidney too harshly. Consider the kindness he has shown Otis. I believe he has a tenderness that few people get to see.”

Unfortunately for Charlotte, her friend is too distracted by her own romantic woes to understand just how important it is that she be a good friend to Charlotte in this moment. Charlotte is seeking two things from Georgiana during their discussion. Firstly, she desperately wants to share the joy of falling in love for the first time with her friend. Secondly, when Charlotte reveals that Sidney confessed he was his best and truest self with her, she is hoping for validation. Because of course Sidney would feel his best and truest self with Charlotte, right? She may be a farmer’s daughter, but she is also intelligent, outspoken, determined and unfailingly kind, so how could he not? Instead, Georgiana responds with, “why would he say that?”. Rose Williams does such a beautiful job here, because Charlotte’s hurt and disappointment is so clearly etched across her face. What Charlotte desperately needed in that moment was a friend to ease her doubts, and unfortunately Georgiana is too wrapped up in her own heartache and anger to be that for her.

Charlotte ends her discussion with Georgiana with as little reassurance and clarity as she began it. She is desperate to believe that Sidney returns her feelings, but her whole world view has just been called into question and on top of that, she spent the day before on the receiving end of Sidney’s mixed messages and Eliza’s pointed remarks. And here is where I think the argument for Charlotte’s passivity falls apart, and should be instead seen as a (eventually thwarted) step in Charlotte’s character development towards a balance between sense and sensibility. Passiveness suggests inaction, and Charlotte chooses to act – she asks Sidney whether she can join him on his walk into town. This may seem inconsequential, but it is anything but. Because Charlotte is not only choosing to trust in her feelings for Sidney and in his feelings for her, but she is telling Sidney his feelings are reciprocated and those feelings are strong enough that they need time alone to discuss their possible future together.

Now, I don’t have to tell you the scene of Sidney and Charlotte walking across the clifftops left me in a swooning heap like every silent film actress worth their salt. I think that was the collective fandom response. However, I do want to discuss the intricacies at play in Sidney and Charlotte’s interaction, because I have seen it misconstrued as passiveness, when really the agency lies with Charlotte the whole time. We began with the scene with a rather inane discussion about the weather and Charlotte’s family (Sidney’s eye roll of self-disgust at his poor conversational skills is everything) – Sidney is both desperate to discuss their conversation from the previous night, but patiently waiting for Charlotte to indicate that this is something she wishes to do. She does, telling him she would rather continue their walk together than return to town for her dress fitting.

Charlotte – “We seem not to be walking into town?”

Sidney – “Ah, yes, your dress fitting. Forgive me, what a fool I am. Should we head back, perhaps?”

Charlotte – “No, there is absolutely no urgency about my dress fitting. A walk along the clifftops is much more to my taste.”

Sidney – “Good. My thoughts exactly.”

Sidney is willing to end their walk and the possibility of discussing their feelings at the slightest hint that this may not be something Charlotte desires. However, following Charlotte’s lead, Sidney admits that he wished to find time alone with her to discuss their conversation while glancing at her mouth every five seconds, and of course (because really, who could say no to Theo James?) they kiss. What is important to note is that Sidney continues to check in with Charlotte at every point in the lead up to that moment. Charlotte only had to say no or ask to return to town for Sidney not to proceed, something she is well aware of and actively chooses not to do. Responding positively to Sidney’s actions is not the same as passiveness. You only have to watch as Charlotte stares longing at Sidney to know that she desired the kiss just as much as he did.

Which leads us to Sidney’s almost marriage proposal at the midsummer ball and the closest Charlotte and Sidney come to meeting in the middle of their respective character arcs, between sense and sensibility. While Charlotte is still prone to introspection, asking Mary how she knew that Tom was right man for her (hey Mary, I think we’d all like to know the answer to that one), she has regained some of her confidence back, no doubt buoyed by the confirmation that Sidney returns her feelings and wishes to create a life with her. Charlotte’s agency in pursuing a romantic relationship with Sidney is once again highlighted during her conversation with Young Stringer.

Young Stringer – “So, you have found a reason to stay?”

Charlotte – “Yes, I believe I have.”

When Charlotte chooses to seek Sidney out, she is actively choosing to place faith in her judgement and in Sidney. Both Charlotte and Sidney are hesitant, terrified of being hurt for very different reasons, yet they are willing to risk their hearts for a chance at a life together. Which is why Edward’s interruption and the fallout from the fire is so heartbreaking, because not only do we see a return of Charlotte’s doubts, but Sidney and Charlotte are never again as close to coming together as they were in that moment.

There is no doubt that Charlotte’s misgivings about Sidney’s love for her are somewhat well founded. Rooted in the uncertainty of the failed proposal and her insecurity regarding Eliza, Charlotte’s doubts are mostly due to her belief that the other shoe is sure to drop, because why would Sidney Parker ever wish to marry her, a farmer’s daughter? The reason Charlotte is so hurt by Eliza’s snide comment about her marriage prospects in 1x07 isn’t because she cares what Eliza thinks of her, but because she’s terrified Sidney, the person whose good opinion she values the most, may think her unsuitable. Her letter to her sister written while Sidney is returning from London is evidence of this insecurity – insecurity that is unintentionally stoked by Sidney’s mixed messages and Eliza’s sharp tongue in 1x07.

“Oh Alison, it’s possible that my future too could depend on Sidney’s swift return. I wish I could tell you more, but it may be very soon that I have exciting news to share.”

Even knowing that Sidney was interrupted during his proposal of marriage, despite his assurances that he will once again make an offer when he returns from London, Charlotte can still not allow herself to completely believe that Sidney wishes to marry her. When Sidney tells her he can no longer make her an offer of marriage, because he has engaged himself to Eliza in exchange for her funding Sanditon’s rebuild, Charlotte’s worst fears come true. Charlotte has been found wanting and her dream of marrying Sidney was only ever that, a dream.

When Charlotte and Sidney meet again at Lord Babington and Esther’s wedding, Charlotte has transformed from sensibility to sense and fully assumed her role as Sanditon’s Elinor Dashwood – emotionally guarded and reserved in the face of heartbreak and disappointed hopes. Their conversation is painful to watch – Sidney holding himself back from enquiring how Charlotte truly is and Charlotte assuming the picture of detached politeness.

Sidney – “How do you do Miss Heywood?”

Charlotte – “Very well, thank you.”

Sidney – “And your family, are they well?”

Charlotte – “Very well.”

Sidney – “Ah.”

Charlotte – “How are your own wedding preparations?”

Sidney – “Elaborate.”

In the face of Sidney’s clear regret and Eliza’s pointed comment about, “simple country weddings” (another dig at Charlotte’s marriageability), Charlotte remains guarded, her mask firmly in place. Even when Young Stringer questions her about Sidney’s engagement to Eliza, Charlotte’s armour of good manners does not break.

Young Stringer – “I gather Mr Sidney Parker is engaged?”

Charlotte – “Yes. I wish them both every happiness.”

Sidney – “She’s not half the woman you are Charlotte. If he can’t see that he doesn’t deserve you.”

Charlotte – “Thank you Mr Stringer.”        

By the time that Sidney stops Charlotte’s carriage on the clifftops as she leaves Sanditon, Charlotte’s character development has reached its ultimate end for the season. Transformed from an outspoken, determined young woman who wore her heart on her sleeve and believed marriage without love was, “a form of slavery”, Charlotte has now traded places with Sidney, carefully guarding her bruised and battered heart and becoming emotionally withdrawn from those around her. When Sidney approaches the carriage to speak to Charlotte, you can see the hope bloom across her face. For the briefest of moments, Charlotte allows herself to believe that Sidney has come to declare his love and prevent her from leaving Sanditon. Therefore it is incredibly heartbreaking to watch as Charlotte realises this isn’t the case and she schools her face one again into a mask of controlled politeness. In truth, Charlotte is barely keeping herself together – like Elinor she is a moment away from breaking apart. Because despite her heartache, Charlotte is still desperately in love with the man who caused it. What’s more, she understands why Sidney made the decision he did – an impossible decision in impossible circumstances. It would almost be easier for Charlotte to hate him. Even now as he seeks absolution while planning to marry another woman, she can’t help but want him to be happy.

Sidney – “Tell me you don’t think too badly of me.”

Charlotte – “I don’t think badly of you.”

Sidney – “I don’t love her, you know.”

Charlotte – “You must not speak like that. She loves you and you have agreed to marry her. You must try and make her happy.”

When Sidney tells Charlotte that he is not in love with Eliza, what he is really saying is that he is in love with her. But for this new Charlotte, it is all too painful to hear and she stops him before he declares his love. As Elinor so neatly declared in Sense and Sensibility, “to wish is to hope, and to hope is to expect,” and Charlotte cannot afford to wish that Sidney was still hers. It’s fitting then, that when Charlotte once again begins her journey home to Willingden she does not look back. A woman of sense has no place for such sensibility after all.

[ceies]

Thorfinn - Where he came from and where to go?

I’ve watched Vinland Saga last week and started giving my opinion on the show recently. Since it’s all still on the forefront of my mind, I like to talk a little bit about my first impression of these characters. So “First impression” because I only watched Vinland Saga once, but I’ve rewatched certain clips, read a few short YouTube-comments and … spoken with people about it (mostly fawning over Askeladd tbh :D). So, this is not just my first impression after watching the show, but it is also influenced a little bit by the ideas of other people. However, as I haven’t actually gone and read any other characterizations before… there may be a lot that I’ve missed there may be a lot of questions I have that are long answered within the fandom or there may be some interpretations of these characters, that are not shared in maybe more thought-out and well-researched Characterizations.

So Spoiler Alert!

Synopsis:

In the first episode Thorfinn is just six years old. He lives with his father, mother and older sister in a small village on Iceland. His father is former and now retired warrior and as such admired by the whole village. He is in many ways what not just Thorfinn but many kids and young adults in the village aspire to be. Thors’ friend Leif is a sailor who has traveled all the way to “Vinland” (essentially Canada, I think) and tells inspiring stories to Thorfinn and the other kids. Thus, Thorfinn grew up dreaming to become a warrior like his father, traveling to the fabled “Vinland”, conquering the seas and going out on his own adventures.

The chance for an adventure comes sooner than expected, when Thors old comrade Floki and his Jomsvikings come to Iceland to demand that Thors joins the war between Denmark and England. Thors who has little choice in the matter agrees and thus, the whole village breaks out in excitement for the upcoming war. A war Thorfinn, intends to join.

When Thorfinn finds his father’s old weapons and draws the dagger being enraptured by it’s “Beauty”, his father talks to him about “Killing”.

“You have no enemies. Nobody has enemies. There is no one who it’s okay to kill.”

Thorfinn doesn’t understand these words, yet, and the next day he sneaks out onto his father’s ship to join the journey to Norway and possibly the war in England. However, before they ever reach Norway, they are attacked by a band of Vikings. Thors being the “larger than life” powerful warrior that he is, fights the pirates/Vikings with his bare hands, then challenges Askeladd, the leader, to a duel demanding that in case of his victory all of his men go free. Despite Thors easily overpowering Askeladd, the pirates don’t honor the duel and Thorfinn is promptly taken hostage.

To protect his son and men, Thors gives his life and dies in front of Thorfinn. Some of his last words were:

“A true warrior does not need a sword.”

Thorfinn is devastated by that loss. He does not understand how his father who was so much more powerful could die. He doesn’t understand why his father refused to kill and is now dead himself. What he does understand, is that his father’s murderer Askeladd still lives. Disregarding or simply not understanding his father’s words, the young child swears vengeance against Askeladd, sneaks upon his father’s ship that the pirates take as spoils and screams his intention at the enemy.

Shortly after the Pirates land in England, Thorfinn gets his first chance at revenge. He stands over a supposedly sleeping Askeladd, sword raised over his head… and then he hesitates, steps back, and leaves. The next morning, he challenges Askeladd to an honorable duel, stating that as his father’s son, he would go the honorable way.

Of course, young Thorfinn stands no chance against Askeladd, but after another few encounters between Thorfinn and the band of Vikings Askeladd offers the boy to join his men, proof himself on the battlefield and then duel him again as often as he liked.

In the following years, Askeladd puts Thorfinn to use. He sends him on increasingly more difficult tasks, many of which could have easily ended in the boy’s death. Slowly killing his way through England, Thorfinn grows up into a teenager. By the time he is sixteen he’s a much changed and stronger warrior and he finally gets another chance to duel Askeladd……..

The Father, and the Father’s Killer

Thorfinn grows up from a six-year-old bright and happy child full of dreams of adventure, with a loving family, and a peaceful home to a teenager obsessed with hatred and vengeance, growing up on the battlefield while drowning in guilt.

What is very apparent early on is that, while Thorfinn focuses his rage on Askeladd who murdered his father, in his most desperate moments he also and maybe even to a greater extent blames himself for his father’s death. He was taken hostage when his father was all but winning the duel. He had snuck onto the ship against his parents’ wishes. Had he not been there, maybe his father would have lived. Another aspect that he feels guilt over – although this is hardly addressed until midway through the season – is that he left his family behind. While his father is dead, his mother and sister still live on Iceland. A slightly older Thorfinn has a dream of his father, telling him to come home and protect his family, only for the dream to turn into a nightmare when the village and is attacked and his father is killed all over again, while Thorfinn is powerless.

He often dreams of Thors. In these dreams he always turns into a child again. His father gives advice that is very true to Thors’ actual character. It is quite obvious from this that Thorfinn knows his father would not want him to pursue revenge and kill Askeladd. It’s something he has known from the beginning, even if he does not understand exactly why his father is like that or what it means to be a “true warrior”. Thorfinn listens to his father, but ultimately, he does not follow. There are some things even dream-Thors does not tell his son. Things he “has to learn himself”. As those dreams in my opinion are just that: dreams and not otherworldly visions, this seems to suggest that there in fact are many things Thorfinn does not know about his father even subconsciously. He knows his father would not want him to pursue revenge, but he does not understand why. The fact that Thorfinn always reverts to his six-year-old self in those dreams I think means that he never grew up from that moment. He might have physically aged, gotten a lot stronger and a bit smarter, but he is internally still that same small child devastated by his father’s death. In ten years, he never moved on, he never got to properly mourn.

Instead he focuses all his hatred on Askeladd, obsessed with revenge – which seems to be the very reason he is never able to move forward as a character. Over the years, and at the end of the show this is painfully apparent: Thorfinn did not grow. He got more badass, but he never changed. He is the same angry boy, only maybe with every year a little bit angrier a little bit more lost in the darkness.

When Leif finds him years later, he does not even recognize the happy and bright young boy within the hateful teenager he meets.

To Thorfinn Thors is an anchor. He is his idol, who he aspires to be. It is his father he thinks about when he imagines a warrior, a true warrior or the concept of honor. It is because of his father that he decides to seak revenge the “honorable” way in a fair duel instead of a dagger in the dark. In many ways Thors is a bright beacon in Thorfinn’s life. He is his idol and it is him whom he turns to in his dreams. However, Thors is not just the Anchor he can rely on… maybe more so he is an anchor to drag him down further into the darkness. Because it is Thors death that Thorfinn focuses on more than his lectures. It’s his pursuit of revenge that he will disregard even Thors most fundamental ideas for.

Thorfinn knows, his father would not want him to kill… and yet he kills left and right. Thorfinn knows his father would want him to go back home, and yet he spent 11 years growing up in war. And all of that happens because of Thors even more so than “in spite” of Thors.

This show very much explores the idea of “Killing the Father”. And Thorfinn is stuck in stasis: His father is dead, but he cannot let go. (This is in stark contrast to Canute, who can let go of Ragnar.)

The other relationship that is most important in exploring Thorfinn’s character is Askeladd. Askeladd is for almost the entirety of the season Thorfinn’s sole focus of his hatred. While in the beginning, he still shows anger and resentment against characters like Bjorn – who were very much also responsible for the way his father died – at the end of the day, it seems to be just Askeladd who he is obsessed with.

Askeladd at this point is an adult, and a lot stronger than Thorfinn, so of course this young kid is no threat to him. But smart, conniving and pragmatic bastard that he is, he knew immediately how to use this revenge-obsessed boy to his advantage. Thorfinn is essentially willing to do everything to get Askeladd to agree to a duel. He also seems to have little concern for his own safety, while simultaneously being a crafty and increasingly strong warrior. Askeladd can use this kid to his maximum potential and soon Thorfinn grows into the most effective and powerful weapon Askeladd has at his disposal – short of his own intellect.

Thorfinn… is somewhat aware of the fact, that Askeladd uses him, but until the very end he never quite understands how much he is using him. Thorfinn does all these things, because he truly believes it will lead to his vengeance. But Askeladd goes along, because he knows for a fact, it never will – or only in many, many years when Askeladd is already old and weak.

To Askeladd Thorfinn’s revenge is a ridiculous game. It’s something that is quite obvious in the Anime from the start, but it hits even harder when Askeladd finally spells it out for Thorfinn:

Thorfinn is a slave to his revenge. And thus, he is a slave to Askeladd. And that without even really knowing.

Because physically there is nothing hindering him from just leaving Askeladd and going home. But he can’t. The weirdest situation is when Thorfinn talks to a slave girl about how he is no slave – when he very much is in that meaning of the word – but if he were he would kill his slaver – which he is very much trying to do… at least that’s what I thought at first. Later Askeladd spells it out: He is in fact a slave to his vengeance, a slave to Askeladd… but he never really tried to kill him. Because if he had, Askeladd would be long dead. All Thorfinn is doing, is playing a ridiculous game because he is terrified of “liberating himself” as that would force him to finally acknowledge his own guilt.

Apart from that hatred, ultimately, there’s another deeper relationship between Askeladd and Thorfinn. This is something the show, as well as both characters involved try to hide and deny for the longest time, but also the type of relationship you know has to be there. Askeladd essentially raised Thorfinn for 11 years. He did that through the harshest means, demanding traumatizing and horrendous things of him, turning him into a murderer, ridiculing him, beating him to a pulp and readily abandoning him on the battlefield. But he still raised him, he spent 11 with this boy watching him grow up from child to man. Thorfinn grew up with Askeladd as his closest and really only relationship, as an adult to learn from. He did that kicking and screaming, spewing hatred and anger… but he did spend 11 years growing up under Askeladd.

Of course, between the two, eventually a relationship would form that went deeper than just superficial pragmatism on one side and deep-rooted anger on the other. Ultimately, they would grow to care for each other. This is of course something both denied, even to themselves. There are a few moments like when Askeladd looks at Thorfinn and suddenly realizes how much he had grown, that seem to hint at that growing relationship, but it is well-hidden within these characters. As long as Thorfinn is obsessed with revenge he can not let himself care for Askeladd and as long as Askeladd sees such a useful tool in Thorfinn he cannot quite acknowledge that he would regret his death.

Shortly before Askeladd’s death Thorfinn can finally let go of his pursuit of vengeance. There is a short scene when Thorfinn stands in Leif’s boat staring at a bird. This is one of the scenes that I’ve been thinking about the most. It reminds me a little bit of a scene in Episode 7 when the war was put on halt and upon questioned what to do now, Askeladd said they would “do what the birds do”. So maybe, I thought, it meant that with Thorfinn having given up on his revenge and no real purpose where to go, staring at the bird take flight made Thorfinn remember that moment and “take flight himself.” I don’t know… if somebody has a good interpretation of that scene: Help me out!

I don’t think Thorfinn went to find Askeladd. Instead, I think that Thorfinn upon wandering through the town heard the commotion and realized something was happening. However, when he saw Askeladd die in front of him, it was obvious that he cared. There is still part of him, that I think is attributing the pain that he feels upon the loss of his “mentor” to his now forever lost chance at revenge. But it is telling, that Askeladd even somewhat needs to remind him that they are supposed to be enemies.

When Askeladd dies Thorfinn not just ultimately loses his purpose that had kept him going for the last 11 years but he also loses a person that was quite close to him, even if he utterly hated him. Thorfinn is devastated.

I think it’s interesting to mention at this point, that consistent with his character so far, the first reaction he jumps to after Askeladd died was again revenge, attacking Canute. After that however, the moment when he is dragged away from Askeladd’s body, he in his last act of the season let’s go of his dagger.

This is so important, because while I assume it means that at this point, he finally let go of his revenge- because it is ultimately lost to him – and the last 11 years… He also let go of the last momentum of his father So, maybe this is a way of him saying that he can let go of Thors now.

As this is supposed to be a characterization of Thorfinn not Askeladd, and since it’s already very long I won’t go into detail about Askeladd’s relationship with Thorfinn (so the other way around) nor what Askeladd maybe thought when he saw Thorfinn in the finale nor what he maybe meant with his words… that will all be part of a possible later, and possibly even longer Askeladd-post… But I want to finish this trying to guess where Thorfinn may go from here:

So… Thorfinn I think is at this point ready to properly mourn his father. He never did this, because he was never really willing to accept his death. I see him letting go of the dagger, not just as him letting go of his hatred and vengeance, but also him slowly getting ready to let go of his father. Finally, 11 years after his death. That said, that probably won’t be easy. I don’t really know that much about the process of mourning, but I’ve heard about the “five Stages of Grief” and if this is in anyway like that… he has been stuck in the “Anger” phase for the longest time. So, I think it’s possible that in a second season he may be stuck for a while in the bargaining and/or depression stage… And I think, we will probably have to go through the same process now, regarding Askeladd.

The way Askeladd died was in a way similar to how Thors died, as in “he seemed to do fine in battle, then Thorfinn appeared, creating an opening for the killer”. So, I don’t think he will be stuck on “Anger” the way he did for Thors’ death, because I think he is old enough to ultimately understand what has happened and why. He did have a short outbreak of anger here, and he may not like Canute anymore – if he ever did… but ultimately, I don’t think he will stay angry at Canute. However, I think in the next season Guilt might be a rather unfortunate companion, even if again he probably knows intellectually that it’s not his fault. This fits because it also is what he has to now deal with in regard to Thors’ death.

If I understand my (very shallow and quick) google search on the Five Stages of Grief correctly, that would be part of the “Bargaining” stage.

Askeladd’s last words were more or less:

“How do you want to live your life? Don’t stay here forever. Go ahead, Son of Thors. Go beyond. Become a true warrior, that is your real fight.”

The way Thorfinn looked in this scene, the question “what to do after Askeladd’s death” never crossed his mind. So even when he joined Leif…it wasn’t really so much a conscious decision of “this is what I want to do” but rather… just following Leif around.

So, because the show is called Vinland Saga… I do think, that ultimately, he will join Leif to get to Vinland or explore some new ocean. But… not now. At the moment, I think he has to do some soul searching which… so far he wasn’t the quickest in developing and growing internally, the guilt for Thors’ and Askeladd’s deaths will probably further drag him down – so I think it will be a while until he makes the decision what he wants to do. If this decision will then be going to Vinland or whether he first decides to do something else entirely I do not know… But the way I’ve come to know Thorfinn I would not be surprised if he needed a big junk if not the entirety of season two trying to just overcome his guilt and finding a new path forward.

That said, even if he now still wanted to go with Leif… which I assume maybe he would want to do that, just because it’s the only option he has and the only person in the town he really cares for… I think that would be difficult because he just attacked Prince/King Canute. So… he’s not going to die… but I’m pretty sure this will have consequences and he will be punished in some way… I’m kind of… unsure what punishment that would be, but as I have spoiled myself a little bit by seeing a picture for the second season where he was in chains – I assume the punishment will be slavery. Everything else doesn’t make much sense anyway, I guess unless they want to mutilate him… which… would be unfortunate since we spent so much time building him up as this badass duel-wielding warrior.

Thorfinn as a Main Character:

The funny thing about Thorfinn in his role of main character is, that through long stretches of the first season he doesn’t feel like the Protagonist. Don’t get me wrong, the Anime makes it quite clear that he IS in fact the main character, but since he does not change much at all between episodes 5 and 22, he seems somewhat “less exciting to follow around” as a character. While I was always hyped to see him fight somebody, midway through the season Canute and Askeladd stole the show. They seemed so much more exciting and so much more interesting to follow around. Both characters were also far more active in the story, while Thorfinn was just lagging behind. Not just in terms of character development but also in terms of the plot that was now unfolding. For the most part – excluding the emotional highlight of Thorfinn’s breakdown over Askeladd’s death – story wise Thorfinn wasn’t needed for the finale. Overall it felt like Thorfinn got less and less relevant for the actual plot the closer we got to the end of the show. Of course, he had moments in between, and especially the last three episodes did wonders for his character development, but still during these episodes I felt like the story didn’t care about him. It wasn’t about him. And the part oft the plot that he cared about (the revenge arc) was something nobody else – not even Askeladd really cared about.

This is difficult to put into words because… Thorfinn still got a lot of shine even in the last episodes. He was always a focal point in the show. But it’s like Thorfinn follows a character-centric story, that focuses entirely on his development and how he processes his father’s death, how he learns to let go of his pursuit for revenge, how he grows up and becomes an adult… while everybody else and the rest of the world follow a very plot-driven story of “We need to decide the succession of the Danish throne”. And this is a plot in which Thorfinn as the main character has no investment in whatsoever…

The one character that brings and holds these two separate stories together is Askeladd. So, I feel like over the course of this Saga we will probably watch Thorfinn grow from young child to old age and follow him through whatever development he goes through in that time. In that sense, he is the main character. But it also feels like what happens around him, is not always or maybe even not at all about him and the individual arcs or seasons may prominently feature other characters as a second “seasonal main character”. In that sense, “Thorfinn is the main character of the Vinland Saga, but this is Askeladd’s Arc… or maybe even Canute’s Arc”.

Of course, it could be that I’m wrong and this is only the case for the prologue, because it is a prologue and Thorfinn is still young and once he is older and more powerful and has a new agenda, he will be able to shape events more actively himself.

Over the course of the Season there were a few times where I did not particularly like him as a character, where I found frustrating or even a bit annoying, but I always understood his anger. As far as main characters with revenge-arcs go (which is not a character-arc I normally care about), I think this is my favorite handling of this particular character type. What I also really appreciate is how while in this season this character is stuck on revenge and he is stuck on revenge for a long time, it is also obvious at the end, that this will change. And since this is the Prologue, I have high hopes that maybe in the future we will see more of a “redemption type” story unfold. As normally if there is a main character in pursuit of revenge, it seems like moving past that and giving up on it is the major thing the story is about. Here with Thorfinn, him giving up on revenge is already happening in the Prologue. So maybe I’m too optimistic about where this story will unfold, but I’m looking forward to following a character who has already given up on his revenge before the main story is even really starting.

[clockworkfrenzy]

I’m going to talk about NDRV3 for a minute

This is going to be long, so I’m adding a cut

First off, the characters were really well written, until they were actually implemented into the story. Lets start with the first most obvious one: Kaede.

Kaede was a very interesting choice for a protagonist. She had an actual talent that wasnt just the SHSL Lucky Student, and she was the first female protagonist in the main three games (I know that UDG had both Komaru and Toko). I entered this game excited for a change in fundamental characteristics of a protag who had actual deep characterization. Then she died. She “killed” Rantaro and got executed. On the plus side, her execution was my second favorite in the game. 

Next, lets talk about Ryoma, my favorite side character in the game. His motive was literal suicide baiting. Imagine you lost everything important to you. You are on your last sliver of hope and reassurance when you find out about the motive videos. You think you can finally find a reason to live. Ryoma starts the video, and it’s Monokuma cheerily saying that he has absolutely no reason to continue on living, and if he died, no one would care. Reaffirming what he already knew, he let Kirumi kill him without a second thought.

Third, Korekiyo. Overall, he was a really interesting and intriguing character. He had a decent talent that influenced his character, but he also wasn’t just limited to being an anthropologist. Korekiyo was reaching the top of my favorite character list. Until chapter three’s trial. His sister wasn’t necessary to the plot, and he had so much potential to be a great character and a fan favorite. In my own personal opinion, there is way too much incest in this series. All I can say is at least they didn’t romanticize his sister or that relationship.

Motive three was somewhat of a throwaway motive. The only point of this motive was to give Angie an excuse to be spending so much time alone in her Ultimate Lab, and an easy out for her murder.

Skipping to chapter five, Kokichi is next. Kokichi was a very interesting character that paralleled Nagito in many ways. For example, Nagito started the game willing to help people, but then his motivations were twisted around and corrupted after the Final Dead Room. Kokichi, on the other hand, was unhinged from the very beginning. He lied constantly and was never a reliable source of information. However, after chapter five, it was revealed that his last big plan was to end the killing game and let everyone else escape, unlike Nagito, whose intentions were to kill everyone except the traitor. Kokichi’s death seemed out of character. He had so much potential to come up with a better plan, yet he just didn’t. Especially considering that he has been proven to be incredibly smart and able to predict and manipulate others’ actions.

Last, but not least, Tsumugi. As a mastermind, it was certainly an interesting choice. The painfully boring and plain girl being the one behind the killing game was a brilliant idea, but they didn’t execute it properly. Every other line is about how plain/boring Tsumugi is, drawing attention and suspicion to her immediately. In every other game, the most boring characters were killed off rather early, with Sayaka and Leon being killed off in chapter one, and Mahiru in chapter two of her respective game. Naturally, It was pretty suspicious when, at the beginning of the sixth trial, she was still alive. Not to mention, the cospox thing was absolute bullshit. I’ll explain that later.

The entire game’s theme is about truth and lies Keep this in mind for later.

Now, on to the behind-the-scenes stuff. I didn’t hate the television show idea at first. The concept of an online television show based off of the first two games was a clever idea. However, they botched it by creating the notion that the first two games were fictional in-universe. Tsumugi claims that each person participating in the fifty-third killing game was a fabricated personality created by her and the producers to make the game more interesting. That everyone in the current killing game auditioned to be there. This opens up the cospox inconsistency. Tsumugi can cosplay live-action characters without a problem, so when does it cross the line from fictional people to real people?. In chapter one, when Tsumugi attempts to cosplay Kaede, she breaks out in a rash across her entire body that she claims is cospox. But, if Kaede Akamatsu is just a character created for the purpose of the show, than Tsumugi should have been able to cosplay as her with no problem, exactly like how she switches between characters from the first two games so effortlessly. This begs the question, “What is Tsumugi telling the truth about versus lying to the players?” The most logical conclusion is that the entire cospox thing is a lie to confuse us. 

This is a game all about lies and deception. NDRV3 is about interpreting the last trial for yourself. I’m going to do just that. What follows is the version that makes the most sense to me.

NDRV3 is a television show on the dark web that kidnaps teenagers with extreme talents and forces them to compete in a mass killing game after erasing their memories. The Ultimate Academy for Gifted Juveniles is in a pirated version of the Neo-World Program. This is how motives such as the Necronomicon were made possible. The first two killing games did happen, and are what inspired the show in the rebuilt world after the tragedy. Tsumugi has a set of controls that lets her switch between predesigned avatars, such as her “cospox Kaede” and all the characters she cosplays in the final trial. This is how all of the cosplays have the V3 eye designs and how she was able to switch between all of them with little to no effort. The Ultimate Hunt was a partially, if not fully, true event that led to the cast being captured and being put into the game. Most of the characters’ backgrounds are indeed real, with some minor tweaks here and there. This can be backed up because of the first scenes in the game, when Shuichi and Kaede can remember being kidnapped off of the street. The Neo-World program in chapter four was put there as a diversion, but it’s clearly not the same program as Goodbye Despair. This current killing game probably occurred five to six years after Goodbye Despair ended, if we assume each season took about a month to create. Not every execution was planned, yet if needed, they could program one at the last minute. This helps explain away Kirumi’s execution by giving her no way to escape her impending execution in a similar way Chiaki and Monomi tried to escape their execution. At the end of a season, all participants get released and can reenter the world as a famous participant of the killing game franchise. Occasionally, contestants are invited back to participate in another season, like Rantaro did. (Kaito also had his illness before the game started, and it was a chronic illness that could have prevented him from achieving his dream of going to space. That’s why he forged all the paperwork to apply to be an astronaut. He also seemed to know exactly when his limit was reached and how long he had left in the chapter bridge scenes).

Overall, this is just my own interpretation of the last game in the series. It gives many less plot holes and can explain almost everything that didn’t make sense in my play-through.

[mobius-prime]

161. Sonic the Hedgehog #93

Crime 'N Punishment

Writer: Karl Bollers Pencils: FRY Colors: Frank Gagliardo

Sonic races back to Knothole after his fight with Ken, wracked with guilt both over the king's injuries from the previous day, and from losing the sword today. That said, he's still not ready to face the consequences of his actions, as he's completely outraged when he exits the Great Oak Slide straight into a net waiting to catch him.

That's one hell of a way to try to put someone under arrest, Geoffrey. Imagine if real life cops just slung a net over anyone they wanted to arrest. Sonic angrily insists he doesn't have to answer to Geoffrey, but then Elias shows up, saying he does have to answer to someone after all…

Within Robotropolis, Eggman welcomes the crowd of Overlanders into his city, though the little girl, Hope, finds herself feeling uneasy. As Eggman invites the members of his immediate family into the palace to offer them a "luxury suite," beneath the city streets, Kodos continues to celebrate his acquisition of the Sword of Acorns.

Might wanna be careful of what you say when you've got a sneaky ninja spider hanging around you, buddy boy. In Knothole, Sonic tries to insist to Elias that he wants to speak to Sally before anyone else, but Elias says that whatever he has to say to her can be said to him instead, since he's the acting ruler. Sonic thus imagines himself apologizing tenderly to Sally while holding her close, and, deciding that that is definitely not something he wants to do with Elias, races off, which angers Geoffrey, though Elias says to let him go for now. Sonic is caught up in his depressed thoughts as he runs, until Mina happily races toward him, shouting that she's glad he's not in jail. However, she finds herself unable to control her speed as she runs, and crashes straight into Sonic.

IS THIS A LOVE TRIANGLE I SMELL? Man, I'm sorry Mina, I love you, but I cannot stand love triangles. Y'all already know this. Apparently Mina was actually originally introduced to the comic with the intent to make her a romantic rival for Sonic's affections against Sally, and so for a little while, we're gonna be dealing with that, until Mina is able to get her own characterization apart from being a love interest. Anyway, at that moment Antoine and Bunnie show up, having just returned from their trip to Mercia with the High Sheriff in tow, bound in ropes, because damn, if high quality mechanical restraints designed by the most advanced race on the planet aren't enough to keep a violent and powerful Robian in check, surely some plain old cordage from Home Depot will do! They say they have to speak to the king at once concerning their new prisoner, but Nate arrives as well, explaining to them that the king is paralyzed and Elias is acting ruler for now. Sonic becomes guilt-ridden once again, and to his everlasting credit, Antoine immediately, without first finding out the story behind Sonic's mood, says that he doesn't believe any of this can be Sonic's fault. With the strong, almost hateful-at-times rivalry that these two were depicted having in the original SatAM cartoon, I absolutely love the respect and friendship between Sonic and Antoine in the comics. Antoine in particular is just a much more well-treated character by the writers, who give him proper character development and depth every chance they get, instead of just having him be the Cowardly Frenchman. (Don't get me wrong, Antoine in the show was hilarious, but he really gets the proper love he deserves in the comics.) Anyway, Sonic explains both the king's injuries and the loss of the sword to everyone present, and when Nate tries to reassure him that the king shouldn't have even gone into battle anyway, Sonic suddenly stands and races off, saying he's going to do what he should have done from the start. Meanwhile, back underneath Robotropolis…

You may have messed up big time, Kodos. Elias and Geoffrey approach the queen and Sally to inform them of what Sonic has done, and Sally is shocked to hear the news. She starts to ask what she should do to rectify the situation before catching herself and asking instead what Elias plans to do. Her mother tells her not to worry, and leads her away, while Geoffrey gets his chance to address Elias alone.

I've never agreed so much with such an asshole before. He's basically said exactly what I've been saying this entire time - Sally is the one who has the necessary leadership experience. She ran a whole freakin' rebellion on her own when she was a kid, for crying out loud. However, I draw the line at Geoffrey's plan to basically install himself as a shadow ruler from behind the scenes. Geoffrey is known to be far too harsh in situations which don't call for harshness, and though he has leadership experience of his own, leading the Rebel Underground during Robotnik's reign, he's far less qualified to handle the running of an entire kingdom than he is at leading a small squad of covert operatives.

Back in Robotropolis, Eggman welcomes Colin, Lady Agnes (the woman Sonic saved last issue), and Hope into his palace. Colin explains who the other two are, but it's a bit confusing so I'll give my own spin on things. Colin is Snively's father. We don’t yet know who the mother was, but she isn't in the picture as of now. While in space, he remarried to another woman which made Hope his step-daughter, but that wife died before they reached their home planet once more. Lady Agnes, Hope's grandmother, is his mother-in-law as a result of the marriage. And in all of this, remember that Eggman/Robotnik is Colin's brother, which would essentially make Hope his step-niece. Enough about their weird-ass family history, though - in Knothole, Sonic races back to Elias and admits his guilt in stealing the sword, presenting himself for arrest. Elias, however, instead of arresting him, strips him of his knighthood and tells him that from now on he's confined to Knothole as a minor, all while Geoffrey smirks in the background. Come on, Geoffrey, you were actually acting chill there for a while back when Sonic was actually knighted, why are you going back to your old asshole ways? Sigh…

Bagging the Big One

Writer/Pencils/Colors: Ken Penders

I think this is the first time we've ever had a story where all the work was done by one individual. Unfortunately, that individual happens to be Penders, who has decided to take the laziest approach to his work possible. Seriously - the backgrounds for the majority of the panels are photos of real world landscapes, onto which the comic characters are awkwardly superimposed, making them look incredibly out of place. It's all just… really, really bad. I went ahead and chose some choice panels that demonstrate just how bad it is so y'all can see for yourselves!

Anyway, remember Charmy the Bee? You might not, since he's been ignored by the comic for so long by now, but he still exists, I can assure you! You might also not remember that he's a freaking prince engaged to another bee called Saffron, because Ken Penders is insane. Charmy and Saffron are lounging in a photograph of a field talking about their future children (YES, REALLY) when a flash of light interrupts them and Green Knuckles approaches them. They're surprised at his color swap, and as Charmy introduces him to Saffron, we see the three of them through a set of crosshairs from afar. Yes, that's right, Nack and Nic have tracked Knuckles to this spot with the information the Albion council provided them. Nic wants to take Knuckles down immediately, but Nack admonishes her for not playing dirty enough, and leaves her to her sniper's perch as he approaches the trio. Knuckles, meanwhile, is explaining his new look, as well as the disappearance of the Floating Island.

This next part drives me nuts, because Nack concocts some story about his aircraft breaking down and needing help repairing it, and Knuckles does not suspect a thing, even though he first saw (and punched) him all the way back during the Sonic Triple Trouble special! Granted, it's not like he ever exchanged direct words with him, and I guess you could say it's been years and he's forgotten or something, but you'd think someone who's supposedly as smart as Knuckles would recognize the face of someone he punched off his island previously. Anyway, Knuckles tries to brush Nack off, saying he doesn't have time to help, and in response Nack makes the very smart decision to throw a knife into the grass at Knuckles' feet where he could easily grab it if he wants to. Knuckles does just that, but then listens as Nack informs him that his partner has Charmy and Saffron in her sights and that Knuckles will come with him if he wants his friends to live. Knuckles reluctantly does so, and as they walk over to Nic, Nack reveals that he knows that Knuckles is the Guardian. This shocks Knuckles, who wonders how he even knows about that in the first place, and then we come to perhaps one of my least favorite pages in the entire comic, for a variety of reasons.

First of all - stop with the photo backgrounds, Penders, they look horribly out of place and incredibly ugly. Second of all, the actual art is awkward-looking as hell - for one, Knuckles just looks like he's amiably offering up his wrists for the handcuffs instead of seeming shocked. Third of all, Gala-Na, instead of being reasonable about the whole thing, has again shown herself to be a horrible person. Again, if she just took the time to try to reason with Knuckles, talk to him, offer him advice and help him with his newfound powers, he would probably listen, because he's confused and scared and in want of guidance from people who know more about this stuff than he does! But no, instead she's decided to lock him into a Chaos Syphon against his will, acting like it's some difficult decision for her to make when she's not the one who has to deal with the consequences on her very life and being.

And finally, we come to Yanar. To the image of Yanar, whom Athair once considered so close as to be his own son, whom Knuckles trusted and helped to reach his final destination after generations of wandering without a purpose, who has acted as an ally and even a friend before this moment - Yanar, handing over payment to Nic and Nack the Weasels, in exchange for helping them capture Knuckles to drain him of his power for Gala-Na's own peace of mind. Handing over the payment and ignoring the shocked and betrayed Knuckles behind him, turning his back quite literally on the one person who helped him and all of his people find their home after so long. He's decided that he likes his new home so much that he'll even betray the one who helped him get there. This was the exact moment I realized I hated Yanar. Even more than Gala-Na, I hate him. At least Gala-Na has the excuse of not being attached to Knuckles personally. If you ask me, Knuckles doesn’t show nearly enough anger, hurt, and betrayal from this event. Way to follow in the footsteps of your adoptive father Athair, asshole. You know, the one who actually cares about his family even though so many of them have turned their backs on him? What a complete piece of garbage. Sorry, I know this isn't actually even commentary on the quality of the comic and it's just me personally being all salty at the actions of one character, but I feel really strongly about this one. Just… screw you, Yanar.

[sinsiriuslyemo]

Just a thought...

Okay so … bear with me for a second (probably longer than that) because I've been having thoughts …

For those of you who don't follow me on Twitter, I posted a thread about possible SVU 'end game' set ups (if any) that Warren Leight will begin to include for the new season. Let me explain:

I was scrolling through my google feed and saw this article which had recently been posted on the blog TV Series Finale where they quoted WL saying, "Look: I assume that if some year, some decade, couple decades from now, we get to the last SVU, [Meloni] would have to come back before we do the last episode or before the show signs off."

And in a lot of ways, he's right. As much as we enjoy delving into ALL of the characters' lives, Olivia Benson is the protagonist of the show. In s1, e1, Olivia was still new to SVU (though I don't believe it was ever explicitly stated how new she was) and we were immersed in the world right along with her, experiencing every new case and meeting every new character through her perspective. Her experiences with Stabler (albeit sometimes pretty toxic) shaped her throughout the series even after he was gone. 

When Warren Leight became showrunner in s13, he doubled down on our already strong connection with Olivia and allowed us to experience Stabler's departure with the character. To simply not even try to include Stabler in mind for 'end game' storylines would never allow for Olivia to gain closure on a significant part of her career at SVU. Let me clarify-- in absolutely no universe do I think that a Benson/Stabler (a Bensler?) pairing is a good idea. It would be a step back in Olivia's growth as a character if she ended up with Elliot at the end of the show's run. I actually also have theories with respect to Olivia's personal life, but that's for another time and only if you guys are interested.

My point is that in a way, any ending that doesn't at the very least have mention of Stabler in some capacity might not be as satisfactory as one that allowed Olivia (and by extension, a large number of viewers) to get closure with regard to the ambiguity we were left with when s13 started and no Stabler. If you guys remember, it was announced in May 2011 that Meloni wouldn't be coming back to SVU. The first episode of s13 aired September of 2011, but even though we knew he wouldn't be back, some of us wondered how the new showrunner (slash new head writer) would handle his departure. Especially because Hargitay was only set to appear in less than half the episodes of the season.

And, personally, I didn't know what to expect, but I was worried that, whoever the new showrunner guy was, he didn't overlook the significance of Stabler in our protagonist's journey. He didn't let me down. The way he handled that character's send-off by allowing us to experience it through Olivia's point of view grew that character in a way we hadn't seen since her first batch of Simon episodes. Stabler was a huge part of her journey (and ours) at SVU. It's been eight years since Stabler left, which is a long time, but considering the show has been on for coming on twenty-one years, Stabler was a main player for more than half of it's run up to this point.

 In the article I mentioned at the beginning of this post, Leight went on to add, "It would be tricky, because it’s now been eight years since the characters were seen together. So how’d they get in touch? We haven’t seen it. Where has he been? How do you explain that? There are storytelling challenges to it."

There are definitely storytelling challenges, but good ole WL has proven (at least to me) on more than one occasion that if anyone could do it and do it well, it's him. He took over characters that had twelve years of history and development and managed to write them in character consistently and he storyline choices were not only smart, but they brought us so much closer to the entire ensemble. He added new characters, some that came and went, some that stayed a short while, some that stayed a long while and that have become part of the family, all while keeping our OGs characterization in tact. He gave all the characters--existing and new--depth and showed them as more than just the detectives who catch bad guys. 

And yeah, WL didn't get it perfect every single time. During his years as showrunner, there were MANY storylines and arcs that could have should have been done better, but there were also many storylines that developed our characters and had the best balance between personal stories and the cases being handled. 

As far as I know, Meloni has no intentions of coming back, but there's no telling how long SVU will be on air and things could change for him at some point. Dick Wolf has stated multiple times that he would continue to do the show as long as Mariska wants to do it and I don't see Mariska bowing out until she either is planning to retire or planning to begin a new venture of some kind and continuing her advocacy. But being the lead on the now record-breaking drama on primetime gives her a huge platform, so that may not be for some time. But I wondered if WL will start to drop Stabler references here and there to keep the option open for CM to come back for an episode or two at the end. To be honest, all of the OGs should be involved with the final episodes somehow imo. I think it would be a nice way for it to end, whenever that may be.

What do you guys think? Can you see WL dropping subtle build up to a possible Stabler return? 

[insignem]

RNM 1x12

More thoughts about RNM 1x12 because why not:

We better get more answers from Noah because I’m DESPERATELY curious, and the three deserve to know where they came from.

-       How was he able to hide from them? If Michael can feel the presence of the aliens at the prison… why couldn’t they tell Noah was one of them? Also what was the point of him leaving Isobel in episode five – just to maintain cover as her normal, worried husband? Also when the fuck did he go to law school??!! And was there something special about Rosa that made become so obsessed with her?  

-       the saboteur on the ship??

-       Was Grant Green being paid to flood the airwaves by Noah, or by the govt?

-       If there was an alien on the reservation mentioned in 1x09, there may be others who survived and got away. Presumably we’ll meet them in future seasons. Is she the one who moved the trio’s pods to safety, or was that someone else?

-       They are dropping these tantalizing hints with the idea that our Roswell three were special in some way, and the alien on the res saying “He has come..”

-       I just can’t believe that all the aliens are gone. I need them to know more about their heritage!! Give me all the worldbuilding.

If Project Shepherd was shut down and Manes was just running a little operation on his own, what’s the deal with the prison? There weren’t many people there, but it was more than just Flint. Is it officially part of the US govt, or is it still part of the renegade Project Shepherd run by Manes’ family funds?! How is that possible; if the govt had decided to cut funding to the project wouldn’t they have done something about all the aliens in captivity? Or is Project Shepherd something different?  

-       interesting to note: Flint is US Army. I’d assumed all the Manes brothers were Air Force

-       Flint hinted that a lot of major technological developments (like the SR-71) have been made due to what they learned from the aliens, which is super interesting for the world this show is in

-       I assume Flint’s smart bomb is going to come back up; maybe in future seasons? I laughed when he ran out of there with a handful of binders… meanwhile Alex goes for the hard drives.

ALEX destroyed me in this episode. It really hit home that he doesn’t much of a family either, other than the family he chooses: Michael. He was so brave and strong and competent and wise and GOOD. I loved what he said to Kyle at the end about war and cognitive dissonance.

-       I NEED to know more about his mother and his relationship with her. How did she leave her son with a father like that? But he’s still in touch with her?

-       She’s Native; could she have a connection to the reservation alien?

Michael equally destroyed me, but even more so the actress who played his elderly mom just shattered my heart with her facial expressions. I’m so glad he was able to have that moment of pure love and acceptance, but GOD how is he ever going to get over this. I sorta understand why they had to blow the facility from a narrative standpoint (they’re not about to transform the show into let’s somehow rehab dozens of elderly, abused aliens), but god did that hurt. I just want them to heal and have love and help. And Michael’s going to blame himself and I just wish he’d had more time with his mom to feel loved and learn more about his past and his people.

-       I’m generally wary of Carina’s tweeting, but I’m glad she said that she wanted Michael’s mother to see how loved he was in that scene with Alex, and give them the unspoken approval they’ve never had from a parent.

I don’t totally buy what Noah (and Manes, etc) say about aliens being killers at heart, but I am intrigued by this idea that it makes them stronger and that Max is clearly tempted towards some sort of darkness. It would be an interesting arc for him (and his relationship with Liz) if he had to get through his darkness and figure out what it means to be good, and I hope they explore that further. He really sucks sometimes (but not all the time!) and I hope it’s an intentional writing choice and not just poor characterization.

-       I wasn’t totally clear on what Noah was saying: that their powers would be stronger if they killed, or just if they practiced? I thought it was the practicing and that he needed to kill to support his body because of the whole defective pod situation

-       But Flint also claimed they get stronger through killing

-       Max’s powers are opposed: killing and healing. The turmoil and darkness he was feeling after healing Liz could support the idea that healing is unnatural to their kind

-       But I refuse to believe that all the aliens are evil; Michael’s mother seemed heartbreakingly kind and possessed of pure goodness, and our three are good people.

I LOVED everything with Isobel and the support Liz gave her this episode, acknowledging and facing her trauma. I would love to see the two of them develop into a close and supportive friendship – Iz needs more friends outside her idiot brothers.

Kyle/Michael/Alex team-up was predictably entertaining; I absolutely LOVED the Star Wars bit because of course Alex would be scandalized by that, and Tyler’s delivery of “Oh my god” just killed me.

-       I’m curious to see where Kyle goes from here… I love him and don’t want him to go on a dark spiral; I want more of the beautiful, mature, supportive relationship he has with Liz (and for him to step in, perhaps, while Max goes on his dark spiral…)

-       Please for the love of god tell Liz that Rosa is your sister!!!!! That better be a scene in the finale.

I haven’t really even touched on Malex because I feel like that’s been covered by so many people, but god. The way “I never/don’t look away” is their code for “I love you” and they are both definitely aware of it is gorgeous. I can’t wait for them to start communicating for real. There’s so much love there and they mean so much to each other, but there’s so much for them to work through. I’m glad Alex was there for Michael through those moments, and I can’t believe how brave he was to fight for Michael and not walk away when it really mattered. I really wish they could have had a quiet moment or conversation after the events of this episode, but I get why that couldn’t happen yet and I hope that something will happen in the final episode.

        - My sinking prediction is that Alex will give Michael the ship piece and they’re going to close the season on a note of like mutual acknowledgement  that they love each other but need some time to figure their own selves out. So it’s not all neatly tied up in a bow going into next season. But I don’t understand how Michael could possibly be with Maria after everything he’s gone through with Alex and I’m wary about how they’re going to resolve that – I don’t think Michael being with her would have any narrative integrity; it would just be a plot device to keep Alex and Michael apart because Alex knowing what he knows is “too much” or something. And it wouldn’t be fair to any of the characters. I hope Michael tells her he cares about her but Alex is it for him – even if the two of them aren’t quite ready to be together just yet.

Couple last notes:

-       GIVE ME MORE MATCHBOX TWENTY

-       “Can’t Love Me” fit seamlessly and was so, so gorgeous

-       There’s a LOT going on with the parents’ generation that could not possibly be resolved in the next episode. I hope that thread gets picked up in further seasons. Is Mimi’s illness related to aliens? What exactly went down with Jesse Manes and Jim Valenti? What’s the deal with Liz’s mom, and Alex’s?  I need to know more!